Unicorn Overlord Rambles: Baxtoria Climax before and after Elheim, Difficulty, RNG, and Journey
24At the time of writing this, I'm currently working through Albion to get my first and last intended ship done before going face first into the end game with my giant pile of Magic Bombs. Aka the real Win Button.
Even as a final island I'd say there were still interesting fights so far, as well as more tutorial skirmishes.
It's been a fun mix of easily rush able checkpoints and harder mixups, with the dual fight vs two armies at a tree stretching my squads to the limit before just barely reaching the sneaky Birdy in for some negotiations. Felt good. Would it be easier with tons of dedicated equipment? Sure. Most of that stuff minus the banner even came from different continents, so it's kind of a neat moment of using this previously meh gear from before.
The game seems balanced around just picking two islands per playthrough before going into the finale, you absolutely can get it all, but from a pure game length point of view this makes sense.
It's a fantastic balance of agency and fun progression without forcing you to explore the whole world to win. It's an open world, not a straight line, and it's just a really fun world to dick around in, honestly.
The tutorials are made as neat little skirmishes, the little interactions you can do before fights are fantastic, and while the main story is a strict whatever, the setting and characters are good fun. I had some ideas for a final difficulty beyond TZ here, and honestly I expect that just like we got ultra baby mode after the tutorial response, I'm sure we'll get some sort of Nightmare mode once they suss our what folks are using as their meta.
It's a fun time, and that's the important part. Not every SRPG needs to have a FFT 1.3 mode. Once you break any difficulty it becomes easy. Even the devs for XCOM EU said Impossible was too much, but all the same, with some game knowledge...it can become an easy almost cake walk. But, that's the harm in seeing a game as a problem to solve. It's a relationship, you get out what you put in, and I think the best way to have an ultra hard mode is just the classic SCC. It just doesn't seem like the system would be much fun if they stretched it beyond TZ Mode. It feels like it's made exactly as it should be.
That's my opinion, anyway.
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