Just finished playing some Pheonix Point and I’m very impressed by how addictive the gameplay is! As someone who got burned out not too far into Xcom 2, the feel of this game really grows on you. Maybe it’s just the more laid back pacing of this first part of the game (just finished my first haven defense). Otherwise, I didn’t really mind the fiddling in the menus with unit inventories and leveling up screen. It just feels like everything you do is somewhat engaging as the world map simulation has just enough interest (i.e the trading and recruitment economy feels right as of now)
Also, I found the stories a nice way of getting you into the mood of it all. Doing little fetch quests for factions like killing worms feel mundane, but they work wonders for immersion, and seem like tutorial like stuff anyways.
That said, I wonder if there are cool little story arcs that can crop up in the game that can be randomly selected in any given proc gen campaign. Say, you have a 3 mission arc of
-“this dude stole data from the stores, and left a bomb behind to distract his getaway!”
-“Now that you’ve dealt with the bomb, you’ve tracked a hide out that he was known to be. It turns out to be an ambush, but now you killed all the dudes and found evidence of the real place”
-“Final confrontation, you fight a battle and uncover the plot, it turns out that it’s this whole other thing that couldn’t be anticipated. At least you stopped him before it was too late!”
Stuff like this could be great for replayability if you happened to have enough writing and free time to plop little things like this together. Can even make random branches of certain story or even tie them to the simulation of the game (ex. if synedrion and jericho have +34 hostility, this thing happens) and could be a cool way of adding immersion into the world…A game that does something like this is Dark Souls…
In dark souls, you have subtle little story arcs that develop with the random dudes that you come across and can have totally different outcomes depending on the sequence in which you explore levels. It was subtle, but did a great job of increasing the immersion in the world.
Just curious if anything like this was being implemented. Thanks! Loving the game!
