This is my first time ever putting together an OT and doing so on fairly short notice, so please bear with me!
Little Town Hero
Genre: Turn-based RPG, quasi-card game style
Platform: Nintendo Switch (digital download only)
Release date: October 16, 2019 (It's already out!)
Developer: Game Freak
Publisher: Game Freak
Director: Masao Taya
Pricing:
US - $24.99
EU - €24,99
UK - £22.49
JP - ¥2,750
Download size: 1.9 GB
In a sleepy, content town situated near the edge of the world, a young boy, Axe, works as a coal miner but dreams of a life of adventure, wishing to pass beyond the castle that oversees and protects the town from the outside world and see for himself what's out there.
Instead of setting out, however, adventure winds up coming to him instead, as a thought-not-to-exist monster suddenly appears in the village, and Axe is tasked by circumstance to battle the beast and protect the citizens with the aid of a curious red crystal he discovered while in the mine. So begins his impromptu quest to unravel the mystery of the monsters and figure out just why the town's ancestors shut themselves away from the outside world to begin with.
The primary focus of Little Town Hero is its turn-based battle system, wherein Axe pits his "ideas" in combat against his enemies in clashes more akin to a trading card game than your standard "attack, magic, item, run" JRPG. Attack, defend, buff and debuff, make use of the help of other townsfolk or anything else at your disposal as your battleground constantly moves. Wear down the enemy's hit points, and you win! Simple, right? Not as much as you might think. Enemies can be ferocious and a solid understanding of a fight's various mechanics and the ability to think ahead are essential in order to survive.
Outside of combat, players can roam around the town, advance the story, and take on and resolve side-quests to help out your neighbors, giving you some extra flavor about the people you're protecting, or even netting some useful points to upgrade your ideas or even convince others to help support you in battle!
The game does an alright job of easing players into the mechanics and introducing things one step at a time, but there's a difference between simply telling you what everything does and hinting at how best to use it. Rather than explaining the battle system's basics, here's just a couple of hints to hopefully help get your brain buzzing in the right direction. For me at least, it all starts with one crucial state of mind: efficiency is key.
Click the image above to fast-travel to the review thread. Overall the range of scores has been...wide, to put it mildly, so consider checking out differing opinions to try and figure out if it's a game that might appeal to you or not!
Official game page (US)
As noted in its previous Nintendo Direct appearance, much of the game's soundtrack was composed by Toby Fox of UNDERTALE/DELTARUNE fame, with Hitomi Sato handling the arrangement. I haven't seen any word on an official soundtrack release yet but if it comes up, I'll update that here, too.
Screenshots
Videos
Combat overview trailer
Character trailer
As a personal request…this game was created by a small team within Game Freak as part of a system of theirs that allows developers to spend time specifically away from Pokemon to try and curtail series fatigue, so if your main take when it comes to this game involves some preference of its resources going into Sword and Shield instead…please kindly refrain and just let this be its own thing, for better or worse. I'd rather this not need to get the same sort of staff post that the review thread already received. Thanks!
Little Town Hero
Genre: Turn-based RPG, quasi-card game style
Platform: Nintendo Switch (digital download only)
Release date: October 16, 2019 (It's already out!)
Developer: Game Freak
Publisher: Game Freak
Director: Masao Taya
Pricing:
US - $24.99
EU - €24,99
UK - £22.49
JP - ¥2,750
Download size: 1.9 GB
Instead of setting out, however, adventure winds up coming to him instead, as a thought-not-to-exist monster suddenly appears in the village, and Axe is tasked by circumstance to battle the beast and protect the citizens with the aid of a curious red crystal he discovered while in the mine. So begins his impromptu quest to unravel the mystery of the monsters and figure out just why the town's ancestors shut themselves away from the outside world to begin with.
The primary focus of Little Town Hero is its turn-based battle system, wherein Axe pits his "ideas" in combat against his enemies in clashes more akin to a trading card game than your standard "attack, magic, item, run" JRPG. Attack, defend, buff and debuff, make use of the help of other townsfolk or anything else at your disposal as your battleground constantly moves. Wear down the enemy's hit points, and you win! Simple, right? Not as much as you might think. Enemies can be ferocious and a solid understanding of a fight's various mechanics and the ability to think ahead are essential in order to survive.
Outside of combat, players can roam around the town, advance the story, and take on and resolve side-quests to help out your neighbors, giving you some extra flavor about the people you're protecting, or even netting some useful points to upgrade your ideas or even convince others to help support you in battle!
- The tutorial reminds you to use up all your power each turn, but bear in mind that doesn't mean that expending it all should necessarily be your first priority. Most blue dazzits, when used, will be replaced by something new from your headspace (or replaced directly in the case of Improvise). It's possible that that replacement idea could be more useful in that turn than other izzits you've already got, so take care not to rush to judgment too quickly.
- On a similar note, your order of operations within each turn is important, and can be used at times to improve your odds in the face of some of the game's randomness. Take Nelz' support ability for instance; activating it will randomly select an unconverted izzit and reduce its power-cost to zero. In that case, the most efficient way to make use of it is to try and convert whatever low-cost izzits you can with your own power before activating Nelz, so that he'll be more likely to select something that would normally cost more power to convert. The same goes for moves like Psych Guard, which will apply a buff to another random dazzit when converted, meaning you can manipulate which dazzits you have to try and get the most out of those buffs.
- Keep the map in mind so that you know when you're within range of certain spots and you may be able to organize your ideas to better make use of support. If you're near a helpful villager, getting free mobility is a big boon, or knowing what dazzits you might need to activate nearby gimmicks might lead to you hanging on to something you could possibly use now in order to turn it into a bigger payoff later.
- Trying to work things out such that you can have dazzits survive more than one turn of combat is really useful, because that's that much less power that needs to be expended in the next turn and can be used on other things instead. Double-check to make sure you can still get the breaks you want without breaking your own ideas, if possible.
- At least so far personally, battles against monsters in particular are designed in such a way that it's unlikely that you'll be able to coast through a fight unscathed. Don't get discouraged if you end up taking a few hits, or if it feels like you're not racking up damage quickly enough. Perseverance and focused thinking pays off!
As noted in its previous Nintendo Direct appearance, much of the game's soundtrack was composed by Toby Fox of UNDERTALE/DELTARUNE fame, with Hitomi Sato handling the arrangement. I haven't seen any word on an official soundtrack release yet but if it comes up, I'll update that here, too.
Screenshots
Videos
Combat overview trailer
Character trailer
As a personal request…this game was created by a small team within Game Freak as part of a system of theirs that allows developers to spend time specifically away from Pokemon to try and curtail series fatigue, so if your main take when it comes to this game involves some preference of its resources going into Sword and Shield instead…please kindly refrain and just let this be its own thing, for better or worse. I'd rather this not need to get the same sort of staff post that the review thread already received. Thanks!
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