Grotesque Tactics 2: Is it worth it ?

[C.flamingo]

That's my question. Is Grotesque Tactics 2 a good enough game to warrant my money ?

[Alienmen1]

Depend, I found lots of bugs that causes the game to crash

[targetbsp]

From my brief play so far, it's more of the same but better looking. In my opinion this is a good thing. I loved the first game. And, I say better looking, but I completed the first one long before it got the engine overhaul. I imagine from the changelogs I read that v1 looks pretty good by now?

If you got bug issues, there's a patch coming for it tomorrow. I've not seen any myself but not played that far into it yet.

On the german forum they said a demo was coming in a couple of weeks so you could always wait for that if in doubt. Bet it's after the 20% discount ends though. :(

[Tekkor]

Ill be putting up a Quicklook/LP video late tonight for it to give people a look since there is not much out there.

You can check my channel for it later..

http://www.youtube.com/user/TekkorGJC (http://www.youtube.com/user/TekkorGJC?feature=mhee)

[srlapo]

Depend, I found lots of bugs that causes the game to crash

100 minutes into it and no crashes or bugs so far. The game runs smoothly on my 2 year old desktop. The camera needs some work however...

[chilitown pope]

i personally would say its not worth it because grotesque tactics the original is still full of bugs and problems for people that have it yet it is extraordinarily difficult to get any form of support. I currently cannot progress in the game because trying to exit crystal caves causes my game to crash every single time. I have even adjusted every graphic option, run in windows mode and nothing helps. I am one person that was very excited about grotesque tactics until I played it. Yes I am aware not everyone has issues but a lot of people do and to varying degree. My concern is the lack of support and based on how they supported the original I would not expect much from the 2nd. Better hope it runs well for you.

[Ducon]

i personally would say its not worth it because grotesque tactics the original is still full of bugs and problems for people that have it yet it is extraordinarily difficult to get any form of support. I currently cannot progress in the game because trying to exit crystal caves causes my game to crash every single time. I have even adjusted every graphic option, run in windows mode and nothing helps. I am one person that was very excited about grotesque tactics until I played it. Yes I am aware not everyone has issues but a lot of people do and to varying degree. My concern is the lack of support and based on how they supported the original I would not expect much from the 2nd. Better hope it runs well for you.

Did you try Silent Dreams forums?

[Dyers Eve]

I'm going to have to echo chilitown pope's comment. I got GT1 for about $5 and still feel ripped off. The constant crashes, getting stuck, saves getting erased and show stopping bugs was too much.

You can spin the wheel and pray you don't get any technical issues. You can browse these forums very quickly and see how many people have issues and determine your chances.

In my opinion, GT1 is a horrible buggy mess and instead of the developers fixing it and polishing it and making DLC or an expansion, they rushed out yet another buggy product. No matter how cheap this game gets, we really shouldn't be supporting people like this.

And I say this as a gamer that loves strategy games and strategy RPGs and have stacks of them, I love sRPGs that mostly got mediocre reviews. GT1 got slammed by negative reviews by the industry and gamers. I haven't met a sRPG I didn't like but Grotesque Tactics will not even give me a chance. I'd say point your money towards HoMM, KB and console sRPGs.

[targetbsp]

The problem is, going off a support forum to judge the reliability of something is *exactly* what you can't do. Because you will naturally see all those who had problems. What you don't know is how many people (like me) completed the game without issue on v1.0. Enough to have warranted a sequel apparently.
It sucks for those that have troubles with it, but it's an excellent game. The only reasonable advice to be given (as with any game!) is... try the demo. The demo for 2 isn't here yet but there's one for v1 (says German but can be set to english)

[Dawnclaude]

In my opinion GT2 is a huge improvement to the first part.
The quests are much better, the voice overs are great. The graphics are great for an indie game. I also like the adventure style quests, a bit Monkey Island charme.

I read about this crystal Cave bug in Grotesque Tactics 1 but I never had it. I saw a solution (deactivate the shadows before jumping to next level) in the forum.

[chilitown pope]

Getting the info is precisely where you should go to make your decision. Yes some people have no problem and others do, occurs for all games. What you should be looking at on forums is when people have problems, are the developers responsive. As for GT1, they more or less stopped commenting for a very long time leaving users to troubleshoot for other users. That is a flag in my book on the developers commitment to the community. As well, being offered for me to send my save file to them so they can modify it so I can move forward doesn't really make me think they care either. It's a quickfix for them but how often can you do that. The solutions that people post that they found aren't consistent in how they work and aren't even quick workarounds. It's lucky chance they work and even luckier for others.

[targetbsp]

As well, being offered for me to send my save file to them so they can modify it so I can move forward doesn't really make me think they care either.


*That's* an example to you of them not caring??

[targetbsp]

I dunno what it is about this series of games but I love them. Played GT2 for 7 and a half hours today and yesterday evening. GT1 is one of the few games I bothered to finish - I tend to get bored before completing games.

[Belkain]

Loved the first one but never finished it, way too many bugs. Despite my best efforts there was allways something: bad frame rate (on a q9400@3ghz, 4gb ram and 5870), game crashes, saves deleting themselves, horrible camera. When the game worked it was great, sadly that didn't happened often.

Loved the "idea" of the game, something like Final Fantasy Tactics yet should I bother to try this one, without a doubt I'll wait a couple of months for them to bug-fix this one. If I see little to no response from the developers I won't even bother.

[Dustin1280]

This one is significantly harder then GT 1 IMO...

But i wouldn't recommend it in it's current state. It is a buggy mess with MULTIPLE game breaking glitches...

If you ignore my advice and get it anyway, make use of all 6 save slots it gives you because otherwise you are going to screw up your game if your not careful.

[Elliowyn]

Still have Grotesque Failure (tactics) in my steam library and thought i'd check how the sequal is holding up so far. Seems the 2nd is still so buggy while the first one's not fixed yet either, guess i can't be surprised... I do hope in time they'll manage to fix it, shame steam doesn't offer a payment conflict like ebay does when the service doesn't match the description.

[Poet|Grotesque]

Seems the 2nd is still so buggy while the first one's not fixed yet either, guess i can't be surprised...

Gt2 is a completely different codebase.
We have a lot people who don't have problems to complete the game. But we still fix smaller bugs.

[targetbsp]

I've listed it as my third best PC game of the year on a gaming forum I frequent. And it's been a good year! I've bought a lot of games.

[Elliowyn]

Gt2 is a completely different codebase.
We have a lot people who don't have problems to complete the game. But we still fix smaller bugs.

You'll have to forgive me if i don't find "we have alot of people who don't have problems completing the game" impressive...nobody should've.

[Void(null)]

Gt2 is a completely different codebase.
We have a lot people who don't have problems to complete the game. But we still fix smaller bugs.

Well that low bar of expectation just lost a sale from me. Winter Sale or not, I think I will skip this one.

Thanks Poet!

[DrSwank]

I found the first game to be very disappointing...but wanted to check the second one to give it a chance considering the sale.

It's amazing that in this sea of people reporting bugs, the developer chooses to post such a half-hearted response in this one thread.

It definitely pays to check in on what the community says - and what is said to them. Pass on this one.

[Brendl]

For GT2 did they finally set it so u can control the placement of your party b4 a fight? It pissed me off like crazy how in the GT1 u had no way to control the party layout and I would constantly end up the girls in the front and my big guys stuck in the back wasting turns trying to move up.

[Poet|Grotesque]

It's amazing that in this sea of people reporting bugs, the developer chooses to post such a half-hearted response in this one thread.

Maybe you missunderstand my post, im not english native.
We are no console developers who work for 1 machine.
On our computers the game has absolutely no crashes.
Currently we work every day fixing bugs, but for an indie developer, hundreds of different pc configurations are huge problems. We have no game blockers, we have some random crashes on some machines. `We improved the memory system and hope those crashes are gone. We get feedback , we'll try to fix and that's what we can do...

[Resonanse]

You'll have to forgive me if i don't find "we have alot of people who don't have problems completing the game" impressive...nobody shiould've.

Except, as the developer is clearly attempting to explain above, there're a small independent developer - and the PC platform is incredibly difficult to effectively code for. Think about the sheer number of possible hardware configurations players of the game have, not to mention possible driver versions and just general computing issues.

They have no effective way of telling what exactly is causing the issue for you - unlike consoles the tech isn't the same - and it could well just be a fault with your PC - not the game - that's causing a specific issue.

Furthermore, it's highly likely the devs don't have a large QA system in place as AAA publishers do, they don't have the resources to test the game on a range of machines and work out the issues.

Yes, it's frustrating, but ultimately that's how independent development is.

[Knight_of_BAAWA]

I had no problems with the first one on my rig, and I bought the second one today.

[Kanan1977]

Maybe you missunderstand my post, im not english native.
We are no console developers who work for 1 machine.
On our computers the game has absolutely no crashes.
Currently we work every day fixing bugs, but for an indie developer, hundreds of different pc configurations are huge problems. We have no game blockers, we have some random crashes on some machines. `We improved the memory system and hope those crashes are gone. We get feedback , we'll try to fix and that's what we can do...

You just got a sale from me for that comment. I don't expect a completely bug-free game from an indie dev but I do hope that they will do some serious bug-hunting when the game is out and also listen to the community about camera-issues etc. I'm willing to give you the benefit of the doubt just like I did with GT1.

[steftymo]

Except, as the developer is clearly attempting to explain above, there're a small independent developer - and the PC platform is incredibly difficult to effectively code for. Think about the sheer number of possible hardware configurations players of the game have, not to mention possible driver versions and just general computing issues.

They have no effective way of telling what exactly is causing the issue for you - unlike consoles the tech isn't the same - and it could well just be a fault with your PC - not the game - that's causing a specific issue.

Furthermore, it's highly likely the devs don't have a large QA system in place as AAA publishers do, they don't have the resources to test the game on a range of machines and work out the issues.

Yes, it's frustrating, but ultimately that's how independent development is.

Plus, look at recent big games that are having the same problems, Skyrim for instance.....

[Matt Gambler]

Yes, it is worth it, as long as you like turnbased combat. And humour. ANd big booty bitc hes.

[redsombero]

only an hour into the game but feel as I have already gotten my $'s worth. Very much enjoying the game.

[Minttunator]

Maybe you missunderstand my post, im not english native.
We are no console developers who work for 1 machine.
On our computers the game has absolutely no crashes.
Currently we work every day fixing bugs, but for an indie developer, hundreds of different pc configurations are huge problems. We have no game blockers, we have some random crashes on some machines. `We improved the memory system and hope those crashes are gone. We get feedback , we'll try to fix and that's what we can do...

Thanks for posting that clarification, I guess it was a language barrier thing that made your previous post look a bit harsh. Good luck with the ongoing bug hunt! :)

[Gewn]

I bought both Grotesque Tactics 1 and 2 for a total of 6.24 USD during a daily deal sale. Yes, there are some obvious typos and grammatical errors.

I've complete Grotesque 1 and there were a few really odd and awful bugs.
1: When you enter town for the first time, you have to get 3 quests from the towns people. It took me 20 minutes to realize I was actually supposed to get a quest from Synthia. I didn't know this because there was an invisible wall preventing me from getting close enough to her to speak with her.
2: Sometimes you can't speak with certain NPCs. This breaks the game when you need to speak to some of them to continue (Holy Avatar).
3: After an event where a party member freaks out over their fear of spiders, I could not control them for the rest of the dungeon. I thought this was intentional. I didn't realize this was a bug until I went to the next dungeon and this party member still was not controllable.
4: Sometimes the game fails to put you in "Explore!" mode.

Reloading from a previous save will fix problem 4. Problems 1 through 3 only worked by completely exiting the game and reloading.

With Grotesque 2, I'm only an hour or so in and there are always from typos and grammatical errors. The Loot hotkey (o) does not work, and I cannot rebind it. In the beginning basement dungeon with the slimes/spiders, a goblin will give you a choice of 2 weapons in exchange for a drink you have to find. I accidentally picked the wrong weapon so I reloaded a previous save. The drink was not spawned. Completely closing the game and reloading would not spawn it. I had to go to a previous autosave.

It appears they are actively working on it right now. Going back to the initial price I paid, $6.24, that's $3.12 per game. Grotesque 1 entertained me for a full day. I'm assuming 2 will as well. If these bugs were present in a $60 game, I might actually rage a little. But for $3.12 per game I think this is a great value. Even $5 each would be great.

[myxomatos1s]

Agreed. For the price, it was a solid purchase. I bought the pack when it was on sale (not $6 on sale like the guy above me, but $15 for the 2 games) so...

I'm not disappointed.

A thing of note: there are bugs. I ran into several playing the GT1. I contact the dev Renk directly regarding these and he helped me. It didn't take days, this guy was on it. Nice guy, awesome response time. While the game crashing and having to send my saved game file to the dev to get me past a point in the game DID SUCK, he got back with me really quickly and I hopped right back in picking up where I left off.

Like I mentioned before, you're likely to run into a bug with GT1 - it's an older engine and harder to manage, but it's still playable. The second in the series is the better of the two. It's got better graphics, a better storyline, and a tactic tree that I dug, with fewer game crashes. There were still a few, but none that were game breakers in which I actually had to stop playing to send my saved game to a dev.

All in all, I'm satisfied. I beat both games and had a blast. I got my money's worth and would pick up GT3 if it existed (and was on sale).

[myxomatos1s]

i personally would say its not worth it because grotesque tactics the original is still full of bugs and problems for people that have it yet it is extraordinarily difficult to get any form of support. I currently cannot progress in the game because trying to exit crystal caves causes my game to crash every single time. I have even adjusted every graphic option, run in windows mode and nothing helps. I am one person that was very excited about grotesque tactics until I played it. Yes I am aware not everyone has issues but a lot of people do and to varying degree. My concern is the lack of support and based on how they supported the original I would not expect much from the 2nd. Better hope it runs well for you.

Just to point this out: Renk (I think that was the Dev's name) helped me out right away when I got stuck due to a bug on GT1. The support was super quick. Not sure who this guy contacted for help, but I posted on the forum that is linked when you launch GT1 and the guy got back with me in something like 8 hours.

Support for this game is not non-existent.