GoC5- Well. That was easy. A few levels and the Valz/Lululala combo SMASH PUNY ENDGAME. Finished Greckland's scenario. Might do a Divine World playthrough before moving on, but moving on to finally playing FF1 seems to be in order. Using Zio and Xena was fun. Good to know Xeno's parents weren't huge douchebags like he was.
As for the game. It's a few steps forward and a massive leap back. Lots of little areas were improved upon from 4. Being able to customize your troops was good, but the game made a lot of them garbage instead of at least passable like in 4. Levels made it easier to keep track of the quality of units, but it also kept you from being able to hold the line with obviously inferior units like you used to if you knew what you were doing. The load times were much improved, even though GoC4 had very little anyway, but the lag in the battles was completely gone, so that was good.
However, the one thing that makes all these improvements for naught is the massive scaling back of the scope of the map. The game is made up of many small maps where small scale battles take place as opposed to one honking big one. It's seriously the difference between the strategic choices you have to make while taking over a city (this game) as opposed to an entire continent (GoC4). There was occasionally a well set up map, but I never felt threatened like I did in 4 because there's never as much going on or things to take into account. I think maybe once the 5 move limit mattered to me and even then there was very little threat involved. Basically, this is small scale, whereas GoC4 is Grand Strategy 101.
The point to point battles made the narrative flow better, but the story itself was pretty meh. Nowhere near as good as Dravania's or even some of the minor countries. It started out well but became very cookie cutter fantasy stuff. Oh well. I give the game a 6/10 at the moment, which may change depending on the other campaigns.
