Wednesday, November 25, 2015

Thea: The Awakening (Impressions, part two)

Well, crap. Didn't mean to post these images without text, but incompetence is always challenging.

Okay, Let's look at the tech tree. You can research crafting materials, items, and buildings. Research points are how you gain the ability to research something new, and you gain them through battles--and, most interestingly, by crafting items.


As you can see, the tech tree is sizable, and it's interesting. There's always the tension between swords versus shields and what you feel is most important to research.

Plus, craftsman have their own skill. Having a village with high-level gathers and awful craftsman will fail, because it will take them too long to build anything.

Here's a look at the actual crafting interface:


It's very detailed and quite thorough. Multiple materials can be used at each step (and if you think the initial step involves one of four materials, it's better than that. It's one of four material types, with multiple materials inside each type. And different materials affect both quality and weight of the finished items, as well as other properties like poison or magic.

It's a deep, deep system, and I find myself obsessively trawling through my inventory, trying to figure out what to build. Plus, like I said, building items, particularly advanced items, helps you accrue research points very quickly.

Okay, here's an image of an event:


Your response options are limited, depending on the skills of your party. If you have a party that's skilled in different ways, you'll have more options.

These events are very pleasant, reasonably well-written (clunky in places, but the general flavor is good), and quite entertaining. They're a nice change of pace, and they can also be very important in terms of story progression.

Tomorrow I'll discuss how all these ingredients combine into a hugely entertaining package.

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