Rondo Of Swords-
Just finished the Elmer level.
This game. This. Game. Is trying for the crown of player-unfriendliness. I don't think it gets it, but this should in no way invalidate its attempt!
So I'm walking people through slow terrain with no enemies around and the initial movement grid says that they can move to yea square. I cannot click on this square or just move the cursor over there. I have to map out the exact route they're going to take even though 90% of the time I don't care and 25% of the time the 'correct' route is not the most direct one as that goes over harsher terrain than an indirect one which I then need to waste time determining.
So the ZOC skill, which terminates movement of an opposing unit through the skillholder's square, is pretty dandy and knowing whether an enemy has it or not is a complete necessity. Do they provide some sort of way of telling instantaneously whether an enemy has ZOC? No, you need to double-A them to bring up the menu, hit down to select the Info option because the menu has no default selection despite Info being the only option on there, A into the info section, and then R into the Skills section. Then triple-B to get out. For. Every. Enemy. Using the stylus is arguably worse because you still need to double-tap to get to the menu but the first tap centres the damned screen on the enemy completely throwing you out of alignment for the second.
I was attacking an enemy that I didn't realise had ZOC earlier and was in a state of annoyance that my guys had both bounced off it which I initially put down to being countered. After that happened again I looked into it and found it was ZOC at fault. This would have been avoided (aside from if ZOC was map-visible in the first place) if they actually made a different animation for ZOC-bouncing than counter-bouncing on the map. To be fair there _is_ a different animation if you watch the animated attack sequence, but those got old spectacularly fast.
Also with regards to ZOC... I'm not strictly sure if it functions as extra defence against regular attacks or not, because I've only seen it on people that are already pretty defensive so far, but it certainly gives off that impression. To get around ZOC you need to use indirect attacks or people that hold the Null ZOC skill. But you can't look over the map before you enter battle, so you can't tell whether you're going to need to have people with these abilities or not. And you send the rest of your team off on errands which you can't cancel once set. So either you save after setting errands and find that you've sent people you were going to have wanted away with no way of getting around this, or you set errands back up every. single. time. you. restart. Currently I have taken to saving errandless in the first slot and erranded in the second slot. Too bad if I wanted to use that other slot for a more worthwhile reason. And if the game keeps clear saves, it goes right out the window for subsequent plays.
So some units have bows that they can attack at range with. Does it tell you how much range they can attack with? Of course not that would be silly. So after determining that some enemy archers had a range of 6 squares I was completely blown away to find that my own archer has a range of 5 when I tried to make him attack something from 6 squares off. Truly, I am just not mastertactician enough to have foreseen this.
So I wanted to run an enemy mage out of MP. Along with the game not allowing me to see what sort of range (and area of effect) his magics have, I find that they also don't show me the enemy MP costs. Kind of an overly optimistic thing to expect at this point really.
So I sent Sasha off to sell some gold bullion while I was in a level. Her aptitude at shopping-class errands is 'happy-face' so this should end well, right? I finish the level and find that she managed to sell them for the grand total of nothing. I suspect that the game played out a grand sitcom-esque tale behind the scenes where she was tricked into spending the money on some triviality she wanted only to end up losing it in a tremendously fitting chain of events that learned her a life lesson for the ages that we will never get to see.
So in the first villager escape map I have found out through my previous attempts that once all the villagers leave your goal will change to leaving yourself. So this time I get ready for just that occasion and keep my people close to the exit as much as possible. And it's come down to two villagers left. One of the villagers can reach the exit if he moves his maximum range and the other is one square closer than him. All good, right?
Into the villagers' turn... the close villager moves to the exit and leaves, as expected. The far villager moves towards the exit but at the last square instead of going on to the exit section it turns off and stands in front of one of my characters that I have waiting amid the exit section. This on its own was headdeskworthy. But okay. There's nothing my team can really do here because we can't leave until all the villagers have left and the goal changes. I have everyone else that wasn't already close at hand run back and end turn. THE VILLAGER SPENDS ITS TURN JUST STANDING THERE. DESPITE A ROW OF 10-ODD SQUARES AVAILABLE TO EXIT THROUGH, IT WANTED TO GO THROUGH THE ONE THAT MY CHARACTER WAS STANDING ON AND WAS NOT GOING TO DEIGN TO USE ANY OF THE OTHERS. Then I get slaughtered, restart, and next time ensure that I have no-one standing at any point along the designated exit zone so as to not hurt the poor villagers feelings.
This is not to talk about how stupid they are in general. They have no team coordination whatsoever, and a number of times moved into squares that prevented other villagers from moving their full distance. In some respects the game is a masterwork for accurately portraying reality! Also, you're supposed to be saving them at this point but the game doesn't seem to care if you let any of them die, which is good because I really have no idea how you're supposed to save all of them. And I was using a full team! I'm looking over an FAQ and see that they recommend using only half your team at this point so that you can send the other half on errands!
The modus operandi of any NPC unit that you have turned friendly is to run off and get themself killed within the next two turns. Fortunately they doesn't seem to stop them from joining your team afterwards. Without even being thrown into the negative status that your units are supposed to get if they get killed.
So I need to recruit this guy Owl so that he will turn all his men to friendly otherwise I'll have to fight through them in addition to the main enemies of the map, which is really not something I would enjoy trying. To recruit Owl you need to use your most fragile character. In a game where the name of the game is not being able to protect people by surrounding them with other units as the enemy just runs through the whole lot. Plus said character starts off with an annoyingly high MC, which is reasonable when looked at from the whole kill-the-medics-first mentality but does NOT WORK WELL IN THIS STYLE. Fortunately, my Margus has ZOC, and I am generally able to punk the enemies out into attacking him first and getting blocked before they get a chance to hit her. Unfortunately Owl picks up Klein syndrome and spends the majority of my tries running away. At this point it seems fair to mention that unlike Klein, where your healer has as much move as him if my memory is right, Owl here has twice the move of our healer.
And when I say 'the majority of my tries', I mean 'the majority of my tries where I didn't move Marie around the corner which results in the main enemies showing up giving me no chance at all of reaching him at a worthwhile time'. The first few times that happened I assumed that I was just misremembering what turn they showed up on. I was not.
So I recruit Owl in a sense (he becomes a friendly NPC at this point, not a fullfledged team member) and he and his team subsequently all die within the next two turns to the main enemies. Because that is how friendly NPCs in RoS roll. Meanwhile my entire team is hiding behind Margus and barely manage to escape and HOW IN THE HECK ARE YOU SUPPOSED TO DO THIS LEVEL IF YOUR MARGUS DOES NOT HAVE ZOC YET
So I suspect that I can get Selmer to recruit Elmer. So I also suspect that Elmer can one-hit Selmer because really there isn't anything that can't one-hit Selmer. So I pump up Serdic's MC and send the two of them over towards Elmer. Who goes ahead and one-hits Selmer. Restart.
So I have MC-pumped Serdic in range of Elmer and Selmer very much not in range of Elmer, intending to run Elmer out of MP. He goes ahead and attacks Ansom, at least not one-hitting him. At this point I am thinking that he is set up to not attack Serdic for some reason. But no! On the next turn he attacks Serdic when I was least expecting it. He was just being a prat the whole time and not following the MC rules. Oh that wacky Elmer.
I have since found out that the game appears to have an egress-alike mechanic. If so I may start abusing this.
