legend

1 hour ago, Spork3245 said:

I don’t believe I ever said I enjoyed it. I said I didn’t have an issue beating it.
You keep focusing on the timer and have mentioned things about memorizing the enemy waves: neither should be a focus. Just put down what’s strong against whatever is coming up on that line in the corner; that’s all there is to it. Anything, literally anything else, is overcomplicating a ridiculously simple mini game. And you should pretty much always be putting units down, not waiting for them to die.
Fort Condor was better in the Intermission DLC because there was actual strategy involved, this is just overly simplified garbage.  

I'm not debating whether you can do things differently to beat the timer. Of course you can! Of course it's winnable! But I'm not interesting in re-optimizing how I did it purely because I was losing to the timer.

5 minutes ago, Spork3245 said:

In all seriousness, I think you’re overcomplicating it and that’s why you’re having a difficult/frustrating time  

I really don't think so. Nothing you've said has been a surprising insight for me. The reality is when I played it, the challenge for me was the timer, not the combat and counters. You managed to slip into a mode where that wasn't an issue, and that's great if you enjoy it. It's great even if you didn't and had to optimize for the timer but enjoyed that process. I don't personally enjoy re-optimizing how I approached it for a timer. Timers are usually unfun to me except in very particular kinds of gameplay (like a race, where it's less about a hard timer and more about improving speed with core dexterity).

32 minutes ago, Spork3245 said:

Naa. I only get good and things I enjoy.

13 minutes ago, Spork3245 said:

 

I mean, just look at the color and put the counter color down, that's what I did. I also ignored the timer completely.  

You realize this is not helpful, right?

5 minutes ago, Spork3245 said:

No need to memorize, the "track/bar" on the bottom right shows you what units are coming and their color so you can preempt. 

It does, but when the game's clock keeps ticking down even when you're in the menu, that doesn't give you a lot of time to process the bar. I tend to be bad at short-term memory of facts in general. E.g., I would regularly need to re-reference the rock-paper-scissors guide they in the UI to make sure I had the right counter (partly because I always found their order somewhat unintutive   [and to be fair, in regular RPS, paper beating rock isn't exactly an intuitive rule either! We all just remember it.]). That also takes time. If you memorize everything in the game this becomes less of an issue, but there's the rub for me!

Just now, Biggie said:

Do you have to do this in hard mode or is it optional?

I think every mini game's hard mode is optional. (And certainly this one is)

2 minutes ago, Spork3245 said:

 

I noticed that the waves were the same each time, I played the hard mode twice on a couple.

Oh yeah they are. Which is why I think it becomes more of a memorization game for working with the timer. Which I dislike.

2 minutes ago, Spork3245 said:

 

First time playing a tower defense, huh?  

 

Maybe I did well because I enjoy tower defense games as a time waster - Kingdom Rush, Defense Grid, SP Phone Destroyer, etc.

Hah! Although I tend to not love tower defense games, I've played them before, and as I said, I played and enjoyed even this very mini game in Intergrade! I specifically dislike how they handled the timer in this. Get rid of it or make it much more lax and I probably would have enjoyed it here too!

24 minutes ago, Spork3245 said:

 

I always have like 30-60 seconds left on hard mode. I just keep putting down the higher ranked counters. and throw in the lower ranked ones when I'm trying to push. Also, I won't use the hero units until my units are hitting the base/towers (and the appropriate colored units are spawned by the enemy as the hero's initial ability usually one-hit-KOs them)

Sounds reasonable enough. I also reserved hero units and didn't just dump them. But I think the game's timer is garbage because it means there is fewer viable strategies and the right one usually depends on what the order of units the enemy will use are and that's just not very interesting.

I think part of the frustration with the timer is also coupled with not having very great control over what your units do. On a number of occasions, I had my units targeting enemies that is less than ideal, and that just wastes time, but I had no real choice in that. You have to just choose the right order so that your units don't happen to fall into doing the stupid thing that slows you down.

2 hours ago, Spork3245 said:

I’m not sure why you guys are having such a difficult time with Fort Condor, I beat every one on my first try, including the hard modes. Are you not using the rock-paper-scissors mechanics for strength/weaknesses?

No, the rock paper scissors mechanics are fine and I liked the game in Intergrade. Nearly every time I lost is because I was down the to final red health on the final building, but the timer ran out.

2 hours ago, MarSolo said:

This third level of Fort Condor is HARD.

 

I was this close to destroying the main base but then the time ran out.

Yup. It's the fucking timer every time!

"almost milsim-like in nature", but is inspired by Call of Duty?

27 minutes ago, Mr.Vic20 said:

I know FFVII  OG had a lot of mini games, but, for my tastes, Rebirth has just too many. I also realize that many are optional, but they are still dragging down the story and combat for me after logging 30 hours. 

I can understand this take, but I generally think it's good for different games to take risks that won't appeal to everyone and lean into them.

The movie found that sweet spot of not being good, but somehow entertaining enough to sit through. It's like lettuce.

11 minutes ago, crispy4000 said:

Beat all the hard mode Fort Condor stuff.  That last one was brutal.

I noped the fuck out of those challenges. The timer ruined that minigame for me.

1 hour ago, Spork3245 said:

Even for the championship belt? The first 3 weren’t bad, with the final a single screw up or not going lightning fast once the timing speeds up and you’re screwed.

Ah I may have missed the additional ones. That makes more sense!

59 minutes ago, Spork3245 said:

That ab challenge was brutal 

I didn't find that one so hard. I did find the 3D brawler pretty tough though. I apparently am really bad at reading "which arm is down" when it's your turn to strike  

Chapter 9 is awesome. 

1 hour ago, MarSolo said:

I can’t do two games at the same time because I start mixing up the controls. Playing Spider-Man 2 and Tears of the Kingdom at the same time led to me trying to web swing in TOTK and Link falling to his death.

In TotK, I wouldn't be surprised if someone figured out how to web sling with some weird invention!

I didn't even know this was a thing. Trying (and apparently failing) to make things equitable by bringing others down instead of lifting others up was quite the policy decision!

6 minutes ago, Keyser_Soze said:

 

Going after your own kind, you sick bastard!

You realize that in building AI I have to "kill" them on a daily basis, right?  

6 minutes ago, MarSolo said:

My battle strategy is usually “fill up an ATB bar or two with Cloud, hit a signature move, switch to another character, repeat, and then repeat again.”

 

Barrett especially is fun to switch to because you can immediately shoot off a charged attack, which fills up an ATB bar almost immediately.

Yeah, pipelining it so you switch to another character while your previous character's ability is animating is a great way to get off a lot of abilities.

This game is legit.

17 minutes ago, Xbob42 said:

One issue I do have is they make it really obvious that the AI just has like a 95% chance to swap to attacking the player character rather than spreading out attacks across all characters that are in combat. This can lead to incredibly silly fights where you swap characters, and despite all the enemies being in the middle of attacks halfway across the field, they, apropos of nothing, all launch their big attacks at a character you switched to half a second ago.

 

This can also make some combat scenarios incredibly frustrating, especially coliseum-style challenges. This is because in some of those you have a ton of enemies all using a lot of undodgeable, unblockable attacks all at staggered intervals to where if you get hit even once, you can be chain attacked until dead with literally no way to avoid it... with the exception that you swap characters, in which case their minds snap and most of them will stop and change targets. Problem is, the game doesn't communicate how any of this works, so I imagine a lot of people are going to have some very frustrating encounters that they legit won't know how to solve, and the actual solution is patently silly.

 

I think the entire thing would work a lot better if enemies had a slightly higher chance to attack whatever character is being controlled, after a slight delay (with the delay being shorter and shorter if you're swapping a lot, to prevent cheese) rather than the current solution of "I SAW THE INVISIBLE PLAYER SPIRIT MOVE, GET 'EM" -- that said, I'm playing on Dynamic, this might just be a Dynamic difficulty issue.

There's plenty of ways to help mitigate it: provoke, protect, barrier, swapping, etc. I just think it makes things a little weird.

I'm pretty sure this is entirely by design, and I decided I liked it back in Remake. When you know that's how it works, coupled with the fact that AI controlled party members tend to take less damage, you can manipulate the enemy AI. But manipulating them requires you to regularly swap party members and gives you another reason to not stick to just one character.

I do, however, feel like its switch time to when the enemies focus on you is a bit slower than it was in Remake which gives you more time to do things before swapping.

1 hour ago, BloodyHell said:

Imo, this is the best combat in any RPG.

 

This is truly everything I’ve always wanted Final Fantasy to be. A serious story with fun an interesting character moments, a huge dose of goofy Japanese goodness, stupid, edgy style, and more Tifa. 
 

I’m dreading getting to the final chapters and having this end for another 4 years or more, but I truly couldn’t be more in love with what I’ve gotten so far. 
 

The key to getting me to do weird open world checklist stuff? Paint it in FF7, give a heavy dose of FF7 Lore, and two annoying and thirsy AI’s. 
 

 

I think it's the best (mostly) real-time combat in an RPG. BG3 combat is pretty amazing in how many different ways there are to play, but it's a completely different beast.

I've said it before, but if the KOTOR remake ever sees the light of day, I really want them to use this style. It would be a perfect fit for KOTOR.