Since I last wrote about Chroma Squad, I've played more and I'm pretty sure that I've reached the last battle - though I haven't finished the game for a couple of reasons I'll go into more detail about below. I've spent 12 hours in the game and had a lot of fun with it - but I don't have quite the same enthusiasm as when I made my last post.
First up, why haven't I finished it? The last mission involves a series of tough, quite long fights (in one of these I actually lost for the first time, though after double checking that all my characters had the best kit possible and taking a different strategy it went much more smoothly), and very near the end I had a bug cause the game to get stuck on the enemy turn. Very irritating - maybe the issue's been fixed, but I'm not playing through Steam and so I haven't applied any patches since I first bought and installed the game. But in combination with those long battles, I don't feel particularly inclined to try again.
My biggest issue with the game is probably these kinds of boss battles that just end up taking too long to be fun. This is especially true for a couple of misjudged boss abilities that spawn a number of mines, with slow animations and delays between each individual mine being dropped. Then you have to wait for them all to explode at the end of the next turn! Other bosses have a lot of health, but once their supporting minions are destroyed you just end up chasing them around the battlefield without any sense of danger. I can't really remember any bosses that I was really entertained by - fighting minions was more satisfying for the most part.
One of the things I liked at first was the relative simplicity of the game, and the focus on team attacks and acrobatics. These things are still fun later on, but as you finish seasons and your team members gain new abilities, some of that simplicity is lost. I liked most of the abilities I unlocked (team members often have multiple abilities at certain levels, which you can switch out between missions), and I imagine the game might not have held my interest as long without them, but by the end I did find a part of me missing the cleanness of the early fights.
There are some minor potential spoilers in this paragraph and the next one, since they're about the story. The story itself isn't particularly interesting, and there's a general air of silliness throughout. The enemies you fight have random themes (which makes sense early on when you're a penniless start-up studio, but feels a bit strange later on as you start facing a real threat), and the main villain doesn't have a strong personality. The dialog swings back and forth between jokes and a childlike sincerity with slightly unsettling regularity - I felt it kind of worked for your team members, and I actually got to like them all for their little quirks - but it often falls down when it comes to supporting characters.
I'm not sure it really needed the switch from being actors in a show to being real heroes later - early on there's some drama when your former boss threatens to sue you, and I think more stuff like that could have been perfectly compelling. As your show became more successful you could have faced new challenges like finding staff, other shows copying your ideas, bootleg merchandise, and so on. Looking at the game's store description, apparently there are three different endings - maybe I'm not as close as I thought, but I can't really imagine how there could be notably different endings. If I can be bothered to replay those last battles, maybe I'll update this part later.
To sum up, I'm glad I played Chroma Squad and I've got plenty of entertainment out of it, but there are a few rough edges which became more apparent the further through I got. I wouldn't be particularly interested in replaying the game, though that's the case for most games. I think there's definitely potential for more streamlined tactical RPGs in a similar vein though, and anyone making such a thing could do a lot worse than to take some inspiration from Chroma Squad.
My biggest issue with the game is probably these kinds of boss battles that just end up taking too long to be fun. This is especially true for a couple of misjudged boss abilities that spawn a number of mines, with slow animations and delays between each individual mine being dropped. Then you have to wait for them all to explode at the end of the next turn! Other bosses have a lot of health, but once their supporting minions are destroyed you just end up chasing them around the battlefield without any sense of danger. I can't really remember any bosses that I was really entertained by - fighting minions was more satisfying for the most part.
One of the things I liked at first was the relative simplicity of the game, and the focus on team attacks and acrobatics. These things are still fun later on, but as you finish seasons and your team members gain new abilities, some of that simplicity is lost. I liked most of the abilities I unlocked (team members often have multiple abilities at certain levels, which you can switch out between missions), and I imagine the game might not have held my interest as long without them, but by the end I did find a part of me missing the cleanness of the early fights.
There are some minor potential spoilers in this paragraph and the next one, since they're about the story. The story itself isn't particularly interesting, and there's a general air of silliness throughout. The enemies you fight have random themes (which makes sense early on when you're a penniless start-up studio, but feels a bit strange later on as you start facing a real threat), and the main villain doesn't have a strong personality. The dialog swings back and forth between jokes and a childlike sincerity with slightly unsettling regularity - I felt it kind of worked for your team members, and I actually got to like them all for their little quirks - but it often falls down when it comes to supporting characters.
I'm not sure it really needed the switch from being actors in a show to being real heroes later - early on there's some drama when your former boss threatens to sue you, and I think more stuff like that could have been perfectly compelling. As your show became more successful you could have faced new challenges like finding staff, other shows copying your ideas, bootleg merchandise, and so on. Looking at the game's store description, apparently there are three different endings - maybe I'm not as close as I thought, but I can't really imagine how there could be notably different endings. If I can be bothered to replay those last battles, maybe I'll update this part later.
To sum up, I'm glad I played Chroma Squad and I've got plenty of entertainment out of it, but there are a few rough edges which became more apparent the further through I got. I wouldn't be particularly interested in replaying the game, though that's the case for most games. I think there's definitely potential for more streamlined tactical RPGs in a similar vein though, and anyone making such a thing could do a lot worse than to take some inspiration from Chroma Squad.