Massive Chalice - first reviews

Reviews for Broken Age are beginning to come in -- and both the ones I've seen are pretty half-hearted with their praise, both giving unflattering comparisons to XCom (which happens to be on sale today at Steam).

Edwin Evans-Thirlwell at PC Gamer gives the game a score of 75 and writes:

There’s more to Double Fine’s latest than what it gleans from XCOM, which is just as well given that it doesn’t quite glean enough to be a serious rival. In a nutshell, it’s all about the perils of badly organised sex.


Massive Chalice’s handling of character genetics is its strongest feature by far. There’s something both ugly and beautiful about how the game perverts one of XCOM’s staple sensations: the fondness players build up for the troops under their charge. As your 300-year (15-20 hour) reign wears on, you’ll come to look at heroes not with affection but the brisk eye of a cattle trader. Is it worth marrying this spindly greyhair to a 16-year-old, in hopes that he’ll crank out one last sproglet before the reaper arrives?

Click to expand...

And Ben Reeves at Game Informer gives it an 8.0 and says:

<blockquote style="text-align: center;">


[/quote]

More information.

I briefly played it and was both disappointed and encouraged.

Disappointed because it has hardly any depth and doesn't follow in the footsteps of FFT or Tactics Ogre but simply copies the modern XCOM. You have the player/enemy phase, which is just dumb and lacks the flexibility of a proper per-unit turn counter of FFT or Tactics Ogre. Plus the unit upgrade options are very basic, there's few enemies, few classes, few battlegrounds.

Encouraged because it ran pretty well and seems feature complete. Since it is a such a blatant rip-off of the modern XCOM it does play pretty well. It has the addictive "just a few more years/turns" of Civ and XCOM. Overall, it seemed nice but wholly unremarkable, and in typical Doublefine fashion it hardly capitalizes on all its excellent ideas.

Basically, they should have never mentioned the game being like FFT during the Kickstarter because it isn't like it at all and both FFT and Tactics Ogre are orders of magnitudes more complex and engaging. I'll buy it on Steam when it's a few bucks.

PS: an interesting note is the game is only $16 at launch on Steam with a launch-discount. The original Kickstarters had to pay $20 or higher for the game. So here is one of the thankfully few cases where people would have SAVED money by not Kickstarting the project and simply buying it at launch.

Brumbek said:

. Overall, it seemed nice but wholly unremarkable, and in typical Doublefine fashion it hardly capitalizes on all its excellent ideas.

Click to expand...

I haven't played it yet, but agree that DoubleFine has a history of games with unique concepts and neat art but little depth. It's sad to hear that this one continues that trend; I was very excited when it was first kickstarted.

I would be in heaven if someone made a PC game that felt like a true modern-day FFT. Still one of my favorite games of all time.

dpc76 said:

I would be in heaven if someone made a PC game that felt like a true modern-day FFT. Still one of my favorite games of all time.

Click to expand...

Are you holding out much hope for Unsung Story?

Hexprone said:

Are you holding out much hope for Unsung Story?

Click to expand...

I'm holding out little to no hope for Unsung Story. The developer is an untested mobile developer. And despite getting Matsuno to write the backstory/lore, he won't be involved in the actual game creation it seems. Everyone chases the FFT/Tactics Ogre dream, but in truth we probably will never get the conspiring of genius talents that made those games.

Also, if you love FFT but haven't played Tactics Ogre on PSP/Vita, you MUST play it. It is worth buying the system just for it. Tactics Ogre on PSP/Vita is the greatest SRPG ever made, being a remaster of the ancient SNES game. I've put 150+ hours into Tactics Ogre and we will probably never see the likes of its strategic depth, diverse classes, hundreds of skills, vast branching choices and consequences, brilliant dialogue, and epic story ever again.

Did I mention you all NEED to play Tactics Ogre ASAP???

Spent 9h on the game so far, all of it either shortly before release or yesterday.

Personally I prefer it to XCom, but as mentioned before I got my beef with XCom. Why do I prefer it?

-while the RNG is high, it has less of a consequence, at least in early levels, as characters and monsters are slightly more HP compared to damage, don't die in a single hit except of very rare caseses. In XCom Crit as well as Hit were incredibly RNG based and made a big difference. In MC there doesn't seem to be this crit factor making it more planable
-The game doesn't have cover. Well, normally I'd say it's a bad thing to not have cover. However in the case of XCom or Massive Chalice, that's not the case. The games use a two-step system and a "more or less" real looking map (not strictly tile based). That gives you a much better overview. MC also does a better job in showing you if you can actually hit. If you mouseover a tile you could move to, it will show you whether or not you will be able to attack an enemy from there. In addition you don't have the ridiculously stupid cover calculations from XCom as demonstrated here and here.
-MC only has 2 dimensions. XCom has heights. Again, this is something which gives you a better overview of the situation. In Xcom a character often had a high chance to get by aliens via the system. But in the graphical represenatation he would have had to do a slam dunk to catch the aliens bullet.
-The Game doesn't downward spiral as hard. Both games are meant to be played in ironman mode, without heavy reloading after each and everything. In XCom however it was extremely easy to end up in a downward spiral. Due to bad RNG it could happen that one of your soldiers died. That then resulted in panik in the group, which was almost certain death for the whole group and loss of the mission, which then resulted in much, much harder follow up missions, until finally the campaign was done due to one unlucky RNG. This can't happen in Massive Chalice in that form. Everyone is going to die at some point anyways due to age. Dying in a mission just modificates it a little bit. Even losing a mission isn't the end of all hopes as everything is less indespensable than in XCom.
-The game doesn't have assymetrical game rules as XCom. Your opponents don't just gain an additional movement once they spot you. Making it nicer to plan ahead.
-Massive Chalice doesn't have scripts within the combat which come as completely random element like "several thinman drop down on positions infront of you, and guess what, they immediately shoot and kill you as you didn't know about it beforehand", possibly triggering the downward spiral mentioned before.

So overall I'd say that the game is simpler. But that is in line with the extremely simplified 2-action-point system both games use. This is very XCom doesn't work for me, very stylized system as base, but then used in more complex systems and graphics, leading to conflicts.
As a result, Massive Chalice is, at least for me personally, playing everything on hardest difficulty, a smoother and more enjoyable experience.

The interface in MC however is horrible and clearly made for consoles.
As example you get information your your traits and personalities and what attributes you affect. In fact that's one of the most importent parts of the meta game. But you think the game would explain you or had tooltips about what each attribute actually does?
Also the character management you have to frequently do to assign them to buildings or missions is as comfortable as Skyrim Inventory Management. Which isn't very…

Edit: Added Scripts and symmetrical points

Sounds interesting, I suppose - but X-Com was already too streamlined and binary for me.

I miss good complicated old school games like X-com and Master of Orion. Games that were made with a vision in mind. As dpc76 said Doublefine doesn't do complexity and depth in its games which makes for promising but disappointing games.

My take is that Doublefine tries too much to make feely games. Games with cute animations and child friendly which means all too often not interesting enough to play for long.

Kordanor said:

*snip*

The interface in MC however is horrible and clearly made for consoles.

Click to expand...

I spent a couple of hours last night on it. The combat system is fine so far, but the UI oh my God! First, you can't fully rotate the camera, you can only rotate in 90 degree steps, I hate that. Then there is no hover information on numbers, what's intuition? what's an 'enforcer'? still don't know.
When deciding who to mate with whom it makes it unnecessarily cumbersome, because each character has good and bad traits, but to see each trait what it does, you have to click on it to open a different screen that explains it, then go back to see the next. It would have been so much simpler to just hover over the trait and a little popup saying what it means.

Still looks like a fun enough game, I'll keep playing it see what happens.

Brumbek said:

I briefly played it and was both disappointed and encouraged.

Disappointed because it has hardly any depth and doesn't follow in the footsteps of FFT or Tactics Ogre but simply copies the modern XCOM. You have the player/enemy phase, which is just dumb and lacks the flexibility of a proper per-unit turn counter of FFT or Tactics Ogre. Plus the unit upgrade options are very basic, there's few enemies, few classes, few battlegrounds.

Encouraged because it ran pretty well and seems feature complete. Since it is a such a blatant rip-off of the modern XCOM it does play pretty well. It has the addictive "just a few more years/turns" of Civ and XCOM. Overall, it seemed nice but wholly unremarkable, and in typical Doublefine fashion it hardly capitalizes on all its excellent ideas.

Basically, they should have never mentioned the game being like FFT during the Kickstarter because it isn't like it at all and both FFT and Tactics Ogre are orders of magnitudes more complex and engaging. I'll buy it on Steam when it's a few bucks.

PS: an interesting note is the game is only $16 at launch on Steam with a launch-discount. The original Kickstarters had to pay $20 or higher for the game. So here is one of the thankfully few cases where people would have SAVED money by not Kickstarting the project and simply buying it at launch.

Click to expand...

No, the PSOne version is much better. They screwed up the remake by making it much too easy with all the lives your characters are given. Also the new class system punishes experimentation because if you change your class you lose all your skills.

Brumbek said:

PS: an interesting note is the game is only $16 at launch on Steam with a launch-discount. The original Kickstarters had to pay $20 or higher for the game. So here is one of the thankfully few cases where people would have SAVED money by not Kickstarting the project and simply buying it at launch.

Click to expand...

Actually no. Those people would save all their money because the game would not have been made at all.

While that is true, it's nevertheless a hardly welcoming perspective for a potential new kickstarter.

I guess that double fine did a great job with all their games in showing how to not do it.

DArtagnan said:

Sounds interesting, I suppose - but X-Com was already too streamlined and binary for me.

Click to expand...

Agreed, although I enjoyed XCOM despite the combat being way too simple and illogical. The enemy discovery system required much gaming of the system, and Massive Chalice uses the exact same system.

Archangel said:

Actually no. Those people would save all their money because the game would not have been made at all.

Click to expand...

Well, true. Obviously everyone couldn't back out of their funding. But the point remains: the final product was sold at a lesser price than the cheapest pledge. That isn't a good precedent.

Humanity has risen! said:

No, the PSOne version is much better. They screwed up the remake by making it much too easy with all the lives your characters are given. Also the new class system punishes experimentation because if you change your class you lose all your skills.

Click to expand...

You must be a glutton for punishment! The original 1995 version of Tactics Ogre was harder and way less forgiving and way more time consuming and grindy and unbalanced. So I see why some of the most extreme players would enjoy the suffering.

But it is totally ludicrous to ignore the massive improvements the 2011 remake/remaster added. Also the 2011 version was done by all the lead developers of the original, making it truly the fulfillment of their vision, not just some knock-off version.

The improvements are legion. Many new story scenes. A flawless re-translation. The WORLD system alone is worth it (you can warp to any point in the story in order to explore every choice using your existing party). The Chariot system makes the game so much less grindy and can be ignored if you prefer the hardcore no-takebacks approach. The new fully orchestrated music is awesome. The inclusion of a robust crafting system, new playable characters, more skills, way better visual effects, quick-save…

Telling people to go play the ancient SNES port on PSOne with technical issues, glitches, and tons of grinding isn't a good way to sell the game. The PSP/Vita version is the ultimate version that takes all the learnings of the developers and makes it even better than FFT.

Also, it should be noted for clarity, you do NOT lose skills if you change class. You retain every skill you have learned, but many skills can't be used with other classes because of logic and game balance. The remake makes it much harder to create "god" characters, which is a good thing IMO.

Anyway, glad to see Massive Chalice has given us a chance to talk about the best SRPG ever, Tactics Ogre (for PSP/Vita!).

Agreed, although I enjoyed XCOM despite the combat being way too simple and illogical. The enemy discovery system required much gaming of the system, and Massive Chalice uses the exact same system.

Click to expand...

Argh, I hate that system, so I guess I can easily take a pass on this.

It looked interesting, but I hate that spawn system too. I'll have a look at let's plays and see how it works before making my decision.

What exactly do you mean with spawn system?

Kordanor said:

What exactly do you mean with spawn system?

Click to expand...

Where in X-Com you moved into range and all of a sudden 3 aliens "activated".

This made it gamey. In maps where time was not an issue, the best way to play in terms of keeping everyone alive was to move once and then go into overwatch every single time. This way, if any aliens activated, you just killed them immediately.

Ah, I see. Yeah, that is totally in line in what I mentioned before.
The system works better by having less complex systems attached to the very basic 2-actionpoint system.

The enemies in MC also do nothing until they see you. They might run around a tiny bit but that's it. But there is no system where they get extra move. And there also is no overwatch system.
You should make sure that you go into vision by all your party members in the same turn, but it doesn't feel as bad as the situation you described.

Pladio said:

Where in X-Com you moved into range and all of a sudden 3 aliens "activated".

This made it gamey. In maps where time was not an issue, the best way to play in terms of keeping everyone alive was to move once and then go into overwatch every single time. This way, if any aliens activated, you just killed them immediately.

Click to expand...

Yep. It was very annoying to have to inch your units forward one by one, activating Overwatch on Snipers constantly. Massive Chalice is just as bad if you want your units to survive. The only slightly helpful thing in Massive Chalice is your units die after a few battles anyway from old age so you can't ever build uber units like in XCOM. Hence, you can play a bit more sloppy on the lower difficulties.

Anyway, I realize fog of war is supposed to add realism, but again the two best SRPGs, FFT and Tactics Ogre, dispensed with fog of war and let you see everything from the get go. This, along with per-unit turns, allowed the game to include much more complex strategy and planning. Anyway, Massive Chalice is still fun for a 10 hour playthrough or whatever.

Brumbek said:

Yep. It was very annoying to have to inch your units forward one by one, activating Overwatch on Snipers constantly. Massive Chalice is just as bad if you want your units to survive. The only slightly helpful thing in Massive Chalice is your units die after a few battles anyway from old age so you can't ever build uber units like in XCOM. Hence, you can play a bit more sloppy on the lower difficulties.

Anyway, I realize fog of war is supposed to add realism, but again the two best SRPGs, FFT and Tactics Ogre, dispensed with fog of war and let you see everything from the get go. This, along with per-unit turns, allowed the game to include much more complex strategy and planning. Anyway, Massive Chalice is still fun for a 10 hour playthrough or whatever.

Click to expand...

What's FFT stand for ?