Since it's gotten barely over a dozen steam reviews thus far, figured I'd do a quick plug for a relatively new Final Fantasy Tactics (FFT)-like:
Eden's Last Sunrise. If you don't like FFT combat just skip over the rest of this post, hah. If you do like FFT combat there's a demo at the link, so I guess you can also skip over the rest of this if you want?
Combat layer is a moderately more complex FFT, as there's a cover system (along with more ranged attacks in general), AP system, aggro mechanics, and several other quirks. Some of the classes make for a suitably different take on FFT mechanics, such as one that's centered around creating large fields of minor floor hazards then detonating them violently. The animations are a tad too slow for my tastes, but the HP to damage to healing ratio is in a pretty good spot so battles don't drag. Your deployed number tends to range between 4 and 8 depending on the mission. Difficulty is a bit on the easy side, but you can tweak the difficulty of each individual battle before starting it if you're finding a portion of the game too easy.
Under the AP system you usually have 6 total. Moving costs 1 (but you can usually only move once per turn), defending costs 2 but only protects against the next attack and ends your turn, and other moves can cost anywhere from 0 to 4 AP, with basic actions generally costing 3. Any leftover AP at the end of a unit's turn will slightly speed their next turn. This works out to having a fair bit of variability in how a given class can spend their turn, which helps differentiate the classes further.
You have roughly 10 story characters, and have another 6 slots to create generic troopers. Story characters don't have unique classes generally, but do sometimes get unique limit breaks.
Campaign layer is... I guess I'd describe as a mix between the more recent Personas and FFT? You're on a set time limit broken up into 5 day weeks: on the first day you dispatch your troops to different missions very similar to the FFT ones, albeit in a more transparent fashion. You see what characteristics are needed and see what overall odds are based on which troops you pick. On days 2-4 of the week you can socialize with story characters for a very basic social link thing and maybe some platonic romance, you can do sidequest battles (mostly set sidequests instead of random, but there are more than enough of them), do basic stat training, or 'explore' for possibly some side scenes, loot, etc. Day 5 of the week has you get your resources & funding (used mainly for upgrading gear you get as battle loot) and automatically doing an explore scene.
Campaign layer is fine? It's not terribly deep, but it fills in the space between battles well enough. There's also a simple card game akin to FF8 or FF9's, though there aren't that many cards or too many different opponents.
The story is conceptually pretty neat, but in my nearly-completed playthrough thus far it's a bit thin - every week or two (over the roughly 140 days total) you have a story narration beat or a story battle. You end up spending more time in the sidequest battles than the main story, which may or may not be satisfying.
Briefly, the story setup is: You have a planet with peoples, and there's magic and stuff. A few centuries back there was a great social split between those who want to explore space and those who want to say home, and thus you end up with the Spacefarers and Dwellers. Culturally they drop ties, and drift apart - magic doesn't work off the planet, and tech no longer appeals to folks on the planet. At the game start the spacers discover some sort of incoming anomalous wave that, if readings are correct, will annihilate all life in the solar system in just a few months. They start up a project to reinitiate contact with the planet dwellers and devise a means of trying to get both spacers and dwellers to survive.
It's also a multiple storyline situation - At the beginning you pick which of two sides you want to be on (i.e. a spacer or a dweller), and then there's a major choice about halfway through. Along with some fifth path I'm not sure about yet, for a total of 5 endings. Not sure if the game is replayable enough for 5 runs, but at the very least you're able to pick which initial perspective you have on the events and which direction you want to go as things shake out. Which is nice.
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Topic: Blurb on Games that probably don't deserve their own threads. (Read 294692 times)