These are some thoughts that came to mind as I played through Dynasty Tactics 2. First up, I want to say my general opinion is that it is a good game, but could use some improvements to make a few things better. I know it is very unlikely another title will be made in this series, but I will put forth the following as suggestions for improvements on the off chance that another game in this line is being made.
- For the last missions of a given scenario, or just ones that use most of the full game map, there needs to be a faster scroll option so I can get from one end of the map to the other more efficiently. In addition to that, navigating the map can be rather difficult in more than a few places. Some towns have five roads connecting them to others, but on the D-pad moves on the map and it took me a while to get used to having to circle around a very specific way to access some towns. Perhaps showing which routs will be traveled when the directional button is used will help.
- A minor annoyance that occurred many times is when I was on the map screen and you have finished doing what you were doing and want to get back to the map you have to cancel back five or six menus. I think a return to map or cancel all command would help greatly with that.
- River and Shoals are common terrain obstacles for most battlefields, but the most common is Forests. Other than an officer having the skill Speed, there is no way to over come them. Items such as the River Book and Terrain Book exist already, thus I think there should be something like a Ranger Book to allow a unit to move through Forests unhindered.
- One element that bothered me is that all castle battlefield maps are identical. The only thing that changes are the placement of towers, depots, and units. To top it off the map is not symmetrical. That just bothers me.
- The battlefield maps look fine at first glance, but certain details can be difficult to see without focusing on them. Seeing the difference between a square that is Grass and Shoal is very difficult, especially when they are next to each other. That goes for Plain and Barren as well. Since they are so visually similar it frequently confused me when my units were unable to move diagonally, which is not allowed for a reason that is beyond me, across these changes in types of terrain. To get around at least the visual aspect of this problem I suggest an alternate visual layer mode where terrain types are clearly distinguished from one another as flat color tiles (a shoulder button would work well for this).
- One element I find strange is when a unit successfully uses the Fire Attack tactic on an enemy unit that the Grass or Forest tile remains unchanged, despite being set ablaze. If the conditions are right (enemy unit unable to move and tactic is restored) the same unit can use the tactic again the next turn and burn down the same Forest or Grass tile. That is why I think those tiles should change once a tactic is used. That general idea also applies to Flood and Rockslide tactics. If a unit uses a Flood tactic then why is it such a local effect (hitting as few as a single unit) leaving the rest of the River and Shoal tiles unaffected? Would it not be more of a geyser or water burst tactic than a flood? Maybe a few tactics that had effects on the terrain might be an interesting element to have in the game mechanics.
- One thing I think would help is a relative damage gauge when looking at a given tactic. It is very difficult to tell how much a tactic will do even when it is the same user in question.
- The Revive tactic should be able to be used like the Fire Attack tactic - as long as there is an ally unit in range it should be usable. It should not require the user to face an ally when it effects all four of the user's sides.
- A helpful addition would be something like a side bar that comes up showing what tactics could trigger from other units if a given unit uses a given tactic. Along those lines, a needed function is a way to select the order in which tactics will execute. Countless times my intended combo were cut short (sometimes in half) because one unit I want to go later triggered early. To date I am unable to predict which units will activate in what order. It is not, as I thought for a while, by the order they are listed in the army. It is not in alphabetical order. So what the hell determines the triggering order? Someone that have never even seen this game can make a guess that is as good as any I can make.
- The selection of unit types available are rather odd. Setting aside a given officer's inability to freely select the type of troops they lead, the unit types themselves are a bit strange. Comparing Footmen to Infantry, they are almost indistinguishable. Footmen can move one square further forward than Infantry, and have 30 attack, 40 defense for base stats. Infantry have 40 attack, 30 defense. That is not a significant difference. The mounted units (Horseman, Cavalry, Brigadiers) lose one square forward movement and gain slightly better stats with each tick up, but again not a significant difference between them. While the game says (in the unit selection tab) that certain units have an advantage over others, the only one I was able to see an appreciable effect on the battlefield was the Spearman/Pikeman's over mounted units. I would prefer a system that had a more strategic element to it even if the total number of units were less, like rock - paper - scissors. Have only one type of infantry, one type of archer, mounted unit, and pole arm users. Have their strength and weakness clearly stated, and make the effect noticeable but not overwhelming in combat.
- Something that happened a few times was that the menu selection in combat went faster than expected, leading to a given unit taking unintended actions or ending their turn. I don't know if holding the button a little too long was the problem or just what happened, but I got around that by paying closer attention to how I pressed the button. A general though I had that applies to many tactical games is maybe they could make action menus tied to different buttons, such as X relating to movement commands, square for tactic list and selection, triangle for normal attack, circle to cancel, or something along those lines. Like other tactical games the X button is the one that gets used 95% of the time (excluding directional ones).
- Though many missions are too small for this to matter, I thought having something like a fog of war on the map might be interesting. It would keep the enemy's locations and movements hidden beyond a given range of your armies and spies.
- This was only a problem on a few missions, but when it happened it could and did lead to me running out of turns thus failing a mission. That is the path between your army's location and destination are not visible, much less selectable. This caused my forces to engage enemies I sough to bypass, eating up turns that, on a few occasions, I did not have to spare. I could move my army along each of the points I wanted them to travel, but when it came to then carrying out the action I wanted, they always chose the wrong, stupid path I was trying to avoid. Step one - let me see the path an army will travel. Step two - let me change said path when it is not as I want it to be.
- A minor issue I have with this game is the significant amount of time it take to play. It is a tactical game, I know that, and I know this type take a long time. I have played several Ogre Battle and all of the Disgaea games. Even so this title just has a slower pace to it. Units move slow, attack slow and tactic still have an animation cycle even when I have the animation option turned off. The Disgaea games in particular have this figured out, so I would direct to those titles for how to bypass a lot of the time wasting this tiles does.
- This is a bit of a nitpick, but if/when you engage a bandit group it just amuses and baffles me how the five units can each have 5,000 or more troops under their command. That is not a group of roaming bandits, its more like a warlord's army in search of territory to claim.
- Another minor annoyance is the camera in battle almost always stays focused on the acting unit. The result is that sometimes the effect of their action, be it an attack or a tactic, on the other unit, and thus the damage and/or moral change, is not on screen and not visible.
- An oddity I took note of is that skills that activate based on the moral threshold will only change when the day changes. That strikes me as just plain wrong. To point his out I tested this mechanic in one battle. The enemy unit's skill was Guard and he had a moral of 82 when that day started. With all of my available units I lowered his moral to 53 before my last unit was up for their action. So yes with a moral of 53 the enemy's skill was still active. That is fundamentally wrong and defies the description of the skill.
- This may just be a result of the way I made my units, but a lot of the officers were not distinguishable from one another on the battle field. The first part of that is that when not attacking or using a tactic the character model reverts to a default unit type. I would much rather see the officer leading the unit so I could tell which unit was where more easily. I do like that every officer has a unique portrait given that there are so many of them. Still the underlying problem is that the difference between officer is small. It really comes down to skill, stats, and a name. If the stats are relatively equal, then they will have the same chance at using the same tactics. So perhaps instead of just starting with different tactics, officers has preferred tactics, that is one or two they were skilled at using, thus had a small bonus to the execute chance.
- Thinking of some other Dynasty games, I thought that a Poison Arrow tactic might make a good addition since the archer types are very few. My though was the tactic deals damage when used and some fraction that the following turn. This effect could be removed the same as any of the methods to remove confusion.
- One detail I find a bit odd is that only Guan Yu, Zhang Fei, Lu Bu, Xu Huang, and Zhuge Liang have the same weapons they use in the (first several) Dynasty Warriors games. Yes I know there is a difference between these games, but I would have liked to see more of officer's weapons making appearances as a little nod to players that know both types of games.
- Spies are rather interesting, but have limited usefulness for me. They have a good movement range, but when they cannot pass through more than one enemy occupied town at a time, my army catches up to them, and that is only if they are not sent back to my capital. On top of that they are little more than scouts until the final mission or two of a given scenario because I need all the craft points I can get for purchasing tactics. It's hard to get them into place, it's hard to keep them there, and it's too costly to use them for the majority of the game. In short I think the Spy mechanic of this game should be reworked.
- For the last missions of a given scenario, or just ones that use most of the full game map, there needs to be a faster scroll option so I can get from one end of the map to the other more efficiently. In addition to that, navigating the map can be rather difficult in more than a few places. Some towns have five roads connecting them to others, but on the D-pad moves on the map and it took me a while to get used to having to circle around a very specific way to access some towns. Perhaps showing which routs will be traveled when the directional button is used will help.
- A minor annoyance that occurred many times is when I was on the map screen and you have finished doing what you were doing and want to get back to the map you have to cancel back five or six menus. I think a return to map or cancel all command would help greatly with that.
- River and Shoals are common terrain obstacles for most battlefields, but the most common is Forests. Other than an officer having the skill Speed, there is no way to over come them. Items such as the River Book and Terrain Book exist already, thus I think there should be something like a Ranger Book to allow a unit to move through Forests unhindered.
- One element that bothered me is that all castle battlefield maps are identical. The only thing that changes are the placement of towers, depots, and units. To top it off the map is not symmetrical. That just bothers me.
- The battlefield maps look fine at first glance, but certain details can be difficult to see without focusing on them. Seeing the difference between a square that is Grass and Shoal is very difficult, especially when they are next to each other. That goes for Plain and Barren as well. Since they are so visually similar it frequently confused me when my units were unable to move diagonally, which is not allowed for a reason that is beyond me, across these changes in types of terrain. To get around at least the visual aspect of this problem I suggest an alternate visual layer mode where terrain types are clearly distinguished from one another as flat color tiles (a shoulder button would work well for this).
- One element I find strange is when a unit successfully uses the Fire Attack tactic on an enemy unit that the Grass or Forest tile remains unchanged, despite being set ablaze. If the conditions are right (enemy unit unable to move and tactic is restored) the same unit can use the tactic again the next turn and burn down the same Forest or Grass tile. That is why I think those tiles should change once a tactic is used. That general idea also applies to Flood and Rockslide tactics. If a unit uses a Flood tactic then why is it such a local effect (hitting as few as a single unit) leaving the rest of the River and Shoal tiles unaffected? Would it not be more of a geyser or water burst tactic than a flood? Maybe a few tactics that had effects on the terrain might be an interesting element to have in the game mechanics.
- One thing I think would help is a relative damage gauge when looking at a given tactic. It is very difficult to tell how much a tactic will do even when it is the same user in question.
- The Revive tactic should be able to be used like the Fire Attack tactic - as long as there is an ally unit in range it should be usable. It should not require the user to face an ally when it effects all four of the user's sides.
- A helpful addition would be something like a side bar that comes up showing what tactics could trigger from other units if a given unit uses a given tactic. Along those lines, a needed function is a way to select the order in which tactics will execute. Countless times my intended combo were cut short (sometimes in half) because one unit I want to go later triggered early. To date I am unable to predict which units will activate in what order. It is not, as I thought for a while, by the order they are listed in the army. It is not in alphabetical order. So what the hell determines the triggering order? Someone that have never even seen this game can make a guess that is as good as any I can make.
- The selection of unit types available are rather odd. Setting aside a given officer's inability to freely select the type of troops they lead, the unit types themselves are a bit strange. Comparing Footmen to Infantry, they are almost indistinguishable. Footmen can move one square further forward than Infantry, and have 30 attack, 40 defense for base stats. Infantry have 40 attack, 30 defense. That is not a significant difference. The mounted units (Horseman, Cavalry, Brigadiers) lose one square forward movement and gain slightly better stats with each tick up, but again not a significant difference between them. While the game says (in the unit selection tab) that certain units have an advantage over others, the only one I was able to see an appreciable effect on the battlefield was the Spearman/Pikeman's over mounted units. I would prefer a system that had a more strategic element to it even if the total number of units were less, like rock - paper - scissors. Have only one type of infantry, one type of archer, mounted unit, and pole arm users. Have their strength and weakness clearly stated, and make the effect noticeable but not overwhelming in combat.
- Something that happened a few times was that the menu selection in combat went faster than expected, leading to a given unit taking unintended actions or ending their turn. I don't know if holding the button a little too long was the problem or just what happened, but I got around that by paying closer attention to how I pressed the button. A general though I had that applies to many tactical games is maybe they could make action menus tied to different buttons, such as X relating to movement commands, square for tactic list and selection, triangle for normal attack, circle to cancel, or something along those lines. Like other tactical games the X button is the one that gets used 95% of the time (excluding directional ones).
- Though many missions are too small for this to matter, I thought having something like a fog of war on the map might be interesting. It would keep the enemy's locations and movements hidden beyond a given range of your armies and spies.
- This was only a problem on a few missions, but when it happened it could and did lead to me running out of turns thus failing a mission. That is the path between your army's location and destination are not visible, much less selectable. This caused my forces to engage enemies I sough to bypass, eating up turns that, on a few occasions, I did not have to spare. I could move my army along each of the points I wanted them to travel, but when it came to then carrying out the action I wanted, they always chose the wrong, stupid path I was trying to avoid. Step one - let me see the path an army will travel. Step two - let me change said path when it is not as I want it to be.
- A minor issue I have with this game is the significant amount of time it take to play. It is a tactical game, I know that, and I know this type take a long time. I have played several Ogre Battle and all of the Disgaea games. Even so this title just has a slower pace to it. Units move slow, attack slow and tactic still have an animation cycle even when I have the animation option turned off. The Disgaea games in particular have this figured out, so I would direct to those titles for how to bypass a lot of the time wasting this tiles does.
- This is a bit of a nitpick, but if/when you engage a bandit group it just amuses and baffles me how the five units can each have 5,000 or more troops under their command. That is not a group of roaming bandits, its more like a warlord's army in search of territory to claim.
- Another minor annoyance is the camera in battle almost always stays focused on the acting unit. The result is that sometimes the effect of their action, be it an attack or a tactic, on the other unit, and thus the damage and/or moral change, is not on screen and not visible.
- An oddity I took note of is that skills that activate based on the moral threshold will only change when the day changes. That strikes me as just plain wrong. To point his out I tested this mechanic in one battle. The enemy unit's skill was Guard and he had a moral of 82 when that day started. With all of my available units I lowered his moral to 53 before my last unit was up for their action. So yes with a moral of 53 the enemy's skill was still active. That is fundamentally wrong and defies the description of the skill.
- This may just be a result of the way I made my units, but a lot of the officers were not distinguishable from one another on the battle field. The first part of that is that when not attacking or using a tactic the character model reverts to a default unit type. I would much rather see the officer leading the unit so I could tell which unit was where more easily. I do like that every officer has a unique portrait given that there are so many of them. Still the underlying problem is that the difference between officer is small. It really comes down to skill, stats, and a name. If the stats are relatively equal, then they will have the same chance at using the same tactics. So perhaps instead of just starting with different tactics, officers has preferred tactics, that is one or two they were skilled at using, thus had a small bonus to the execute chance.
- Thinking of some other Dynasty games, I thought that a Poison Arrow tactic might make a good addition since the archer types are very few. My though was the tactic deals damage when used and some fraction that the following turn. This effect could be removed the same as any of the methods to remove confusion.
- One detail I find a bit odd is that only Guan Yu, Zhang Fei, Lu Bu, Xu Huang, and Zhuge Liang have the same weapons they use in the (first several) Dynasty Warriors games. Yes I know there is a difference between these games, but I would have liked to see more of officer's weapons making appearances as a little nod to players that know both types of games.
- Spies are rather interesting, but have limited usefulness for me. They have a good movement range, but when they cannot pass through more than one enemy occupied town at a time, my army catches up to them, and that is only if they are not sent back to my capital. On top of that they are little more than scouts until the final mission or two of a given scenario because I need all the craft points I can get for purchasing tactics. It's hard to get them into place, it's hard to keep them there, and it's too costly to use them for the majority of the game. In short I think the Spy mechanic of this game should be reworked.