Yeah I agree with you in principle, I don't think it's as good at LoT2 either. Tri puts more emphasis on the jarpiggy stuff (unlocking characters via materials, persistent upgrade crafting, multiple separate grinding aid mechanics) at the cost of cutting the boss count in half, removing all FOEs and optional bosses... something comparable happens with the writing - it's so wordy in many places, yet some characters don't even get an intro scene. I'm left thinking, shouldn't there be something here? The parts after the route split work a lot better after the comparative slump midgame, those side mechanics gain legitimacy as the game starts expecting more of you.Vanguard wrote: ↑Thu Feb 05, 2026 1:34 am Unfortunately the story gets very bad and quite wordy again in later strata. Doesn't seem to ever get quite as verbose as the first dungeon, but it never goes back to the brisk, lighthearted fun of 1 and 2 either. I started on lunatic difficulty but switched to hard later. Lunatic makes the random encounters even easier, which isn't good, and makes some of the bosses really dumb. You can still rematch the lunatic versions of bosses later, and the game even says that hard is what it was balanced around. Despite how it may appear, you can do and unlock everything the game has to offer on all difficulty settings.
The gameplay is good. The party building and boss fights are still solid like one would expect from this series. The dungeons seem more complex than in the last two games. It took a while to solve all the puzzles in the sokoban dungeon. So far I think 2 was better overall though. 2 has a higher boss frequency, and the playable character abilties in 3 are often needlessly complex. I liked starting with every character's full moveset and picking up support abilities over time in 2 better than building up a moveset over time in 3, and I really don't care for the abilities that only work on certain turns, or the abilities you can't use until you build up character specific resources.
I'm not sure how much the Lunatic level limits really affected me. I'd have to see how the numbers work out side-by-side to tell, nothing that struck me as particularly unfair wouldn't still be unfair with higher stats. You keep skill points from going over the limit, so Hard and Lunatic are likely to have access to the same skills at the same boss anyway. Without any other factors going on the default solution to a Tri boss is rocket tag, which I guess was technically also true in LoT2, but you didn't have anywhere near as many knobs to turn to help get there.
There are loads of good changes, lots of little distinguishing new character details, the revised status effects (instant death now damaging bosses for a % of their current HP for instance), types previously with a hopeless lack of support are now more complete and playable, like offensive Sanae, macho Wriggle, attacker Aya etc. My only problem with the skill trees is how bumpy they make character power levels, otherwise I'm very positive. Love the new WRY status, just a vastly superior take on Press Turns. Somehow ATB manipulation and quickswapping are even more overpowered than before (it's not a 4-turn requirement if you get 4 turns before the boss can do anything).
As to the story, the first third is mostly interminable, the middle third turns into a paint-by-numbers nothingburger, and the final third is when it finally gets going, at which point I thought it was rather likable. Probably one of the better fangame stories. There are still lots of parts that are inelegantly longwinded and/or overbearing in the expositing and explaining, but I acquired a tolerance for that and the presented themes were just fine. It's amusing to me how the story's quality is inversely proportional to the amount of attention the Hifuus are being given, the more sidelined and irrelevant they get, the better the story gets. Truly forever useless.
Anyway I've been complaining far too much. tl;dr it's good - better than a whole lot of games - but it's dragging its feet for the first 2/3rds and isn't as tightly made as the last one.
