Riot Stars (ライアット・スターズ), launched 5/2/1997, launched by Hector (or Hect?)

This sport appears to have been impressed by Ogre Battle, though it’s not simply an imitation (it’s attention-grabbing that there haven’t been some other OB-like video games since OB). The title is a thriller; I don’t know what sort of sport to count on seeing it, but it surely takes place in a typical medieval fantasy world (with an historical tradition that produced robots).

As in Ogre Battle, you create squads. Each squad can have as much as 5 members and three varieties of models. There are varied varieties of human lessons, and quite a few monster lessons. They will be class modified in the event that they fulfill the correct circumstances.

What is totally different concerning the progress system is that it’s all achieved via “jewels”, that are the foreign money you utilize to purchase factor but additionally degree up. This means that you’ve got numerous management over your occasion’s growth. But because you simply play the 35 or so battles so as with no alternative to free battle or repeat, the amount of cash and XP you will get within the sport is restricted. There is a big distinction in effectiveness of lessons — if you realize the system nicely you might create 4 or 5 squads within the first few battles that would stomp all around the remainder of the sport. Or, you possibly can waste numerous jewels on squads which can be at all times going to be a battle to make use of and can finally not be capable to deal with among the later sport enemies. If you used no assist in any respect, it could be doable to finish up within the latter third of the sport with a crew of completely unusable characters, no jewels, and no alternative however to restart from the start. The nature of the sport makes it onerous to experiment.

Making the squad formation much more of a problem is that the sport has permadeath. As lengthy as one unit from the squad stays alive on the finish of the battle you possibly can pay 50 jewels per unit to heal after the battle. But if the squad is worn out, they’re gone ceaselessly. You can go to a constructing within the capital (when you’ve entry to the capital) that will provide you with some jewels as a comfort prize. But I don’t assume the jewels you get from there are sufficient to rebuild an entire squad; you are able to do some low-cost methods with that spirit store to farm jewels (I don’t know the main points however I feel you possibly can simply purchase the most cost effective models and deliberately get them killed?)

As ordinary, I’m not a fan of permadeath. This sport just isn’t as unforgiving as Fire Emblem, however you’ll nonetheless encounter enemies that may wipe out weak squads from full HP in a single battle, and you continue to must take care of the scenario of by chance shifting a unit one house too far after which having them worn out. So I did use save states, as I normally do with permadeath video games.

The flip system relies on the squad’s “wait” worth. A counter counts down everybody’s wait from the total worth to 0, then that squad will get to behave, and their counter will get put again as much as the utmost. I’m not completely certain how the wait worth is calculated; having 1 unit within the squad vs. 5 models doesn’t make a lot of a distinction so I feel it’s calculated from the typical of everybody’s wait — wait is affected by Agility however I don’t know if there are different components concerned. 40 is the bottom wait; I don’t know if there’s a theoretical most however the highest you’ll usually see is higher 70s or decrease 80s. So there is no such thing as a idea of a participant or enemy flip; every unit simply acts when their wait hits 0.

Each unit’s motion kind can be managed by who’s within the squad (whether or not they fly, and many others). Finally, the vary of assault can be totally different — if in case you have individuals who have vary 2 or 3 assaults they will assault from afar. Attacking from behind produces a scenario like the image above the place you get first strike and might assault their again ranks.

The battles occur in actual time. Characters transfer ahead and assault for some time, then the battle will finish after a time. “Losing” the battle doesn’t have any impact different than simply the HP/guys that had been misplaced throughout it. During the battle you can’t instantly management the characters, however you should utilize particular assaults from the chief and activate a celebration assault.

As you assault you construct up gems (the inexperienced issues within the image above). When you refill the bar and it begins flashing, you should utilize a celebration assault, or you possibly can select to not after which you’re going to get a jewel on the finish of the battle. These jewels can be utilized to activate the particular assaults (you additionally get a jewel for doing a 15 hit combo).

Clearing a battle offers you jewels, and typically there’s a bonus objective — normally beating the map in a sure period of time, but it surely is also saving NPCs or not permitting cities to be captured (the cities are like FE the place you get objects). In the primary few chapters virtually each battle has a bonus objective, however beginning with chapter 3 virtually none of them do; I wonder if that’s only a rushed launch challenge, though it looks like no less than they may put in deadlines.

Between battles you possibly can typically transfer round to totally different cities to purchase tools, recruit new folks, or speak to the villagers for hints. As I discussed earlier than, for essentially the most half that is merely preventing every battle in sequence, however there are a couple of locations the place there are optionally available battles or the battles will go otherwise relying on what you probably did beforehand.

The sport is split into 5 chapters. At the start, the principle character is assigned to the ninth unit of the Carlain Kingdom military. Carlain is being invaded by the Empire. The ninth unit is a spot the place they stick folks for his or her careers to die; no person trusts them to do something proper and so they continuously get caught with drudge jobs and blamed for issues that go flawed.

The first chapter is principally them simply getting despatched on random duties; they make associates with some fairies and hobbits (as soon as once more the Tolkien property can’t learn Japanese), rescue the Princess of Carlain however get blamed for kidnapping her, and different issues like that. In the second chapter we begin to encounter the robots — there are 4 historical robots which can be being unearthed from the traditional civilization, and each the Empire and Carlain are constructing their very own robots in imitation. (These robots are very highly effective normally however take large harm from spells)

In the third chapter the ninth squad begins getting blamed for increasingly stuff and finally has to flee the continent as we’re going through the dying penalty for supposed treason. This was the final tough chapter for me; the picture above was an particularly annoying battle as a result of there’s a hidden cannon that comes out. The cannon can destroy most models in a single assault part. I needed to load state an enormous variety of instances to cross this with out anybody getting destroyed; looking back I ought to have simply let one in all my extra ineffective models die.

This was additionally the purpose the place I appeared up some data on stronger models; the dragons and upgraded fairies above are fairly highly effective and after you have a few squads of them plus a hidden character robotic and a few magic utilizing squads, the sport just isn’t very difficult. The dragons’ “windstorm” assault (pictured above) drives again the attackers in order that typically they’ll all die with out even getting an assault.

Another option to beat robust models is to mash the circle button as quickly because the battle begins to make use of Super assaults time and again.

In Chapter 4 we find yourself exiled on an island with the prince and princess of Carlain; it seems that one of many greater up ministers has usurped the federal government and is hoping to make use of the traditional robots to take over the world. First we have now to beat the Dark Elves on this land (the principle 2 are tough however with the brand new magic person that joins, her Holy Blast will take them out in a single hit — so far as I noticed this holy blast assault will destroy any enemy within the sport in a single use).

Finally we head again to Carlain, and take again the nation. The minister heads to a floating island of historical expertise however we cease him (the ultimate boss is only a robotic that dies to 1 use of holy blast or any magic, actually). He tries to crash the island into Carlain however we redirect it into the ocean as an alternative.

Overall that is an OK sport. The story is a bit weak and the sport steadiness may have been loads higher — it’s too dangerous there’s no Riot Stars 2 the place they may have fastened among the points.

In the subsequent couple of weeks I’m going to have restricted time to play video games, so I’ll must make some “cheat” posts on Final Fantasy Tactics and Atelier Marie earlier than I get again to creating the subsequent SFC sport submit of Seiken Densetsu 3.