Only started playing it fairly recently. It’s been hanging out in my Steam library for some time after I received it from Humble Monthly quite some time ago. Decided to try it on my Deck. Runs flawlessly despite being marked as “unsupported” by Steam.
English voice acting is surprisingly good. In a JRPG I’d always find someone who’s jarring to listen to, and it’s pretty terrible if that’s the main character. But so far I haven’t found any character that annoyed me, and like you said, the actress of Velvet seems to have no weakness in voice acting skill; she can sound soft and tender, moody and dark, and scream with rage. I wish anime had more English VAs like that, instead of the default 3 voices everyone seems to use.
Not sure how I feel about combat, though. I know it’s a staple of the Tales series, but I’d much rather fight enemies on the map than being sucked into an encounter like a turn based JRPG.
I’m at the part where Velvet joins with a pirate Reaper to take over a fortress to clear the way forward. I’ve cleared out the control room and soon will be capturing an enemy battleship. So far the story has been… incredibly edgy. I’m not sure if it’ll change, but Velvet is basically female Sasuke from Naruto Shippuden in attitude. I really like the presentation, however. Cutscenes are animated in-engine and transition to animated anime slides. Very clever.
I think the only game you mentioned on that list which is actually open world might be Final Fantasy. None of the other games are open world.
Open world games are The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, The Witcher III: Wild Hunt, Conan Exiles, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, Forza Horizon, Shadow of the Colossus, Eden Ring, Insomniac’s Spiderman.
Some of these have unique traversal mechanics, some of these use only generic kinds, such as walking.
So the skirmisher is a spear-throwing foot soldier with a shield. Historically a foot soldier would have a shield, a few throwing spears, and then a melee weapon. But in Age of Empires II the spear throwing and the melee are divided into two separate units.
Age of Empires II does have a light cavelry line, though, and they’re pretty quick. But only civs historically known for their good cavelry have bonuses towards them that make the viable (i.e. There are various steppe-civs in AoEII, as well as Mongols and Huns, and I’m sure Turks and Saracens have some benefit to light cav as well).
In this regard Age of Empires IV is more historically accurate, as that game can have completely unsymmetrical civs, whereas Age of Empires II has far more symmetrical gameplay.
Yeah, in Age of Empires II they’re more expensive than Skirmishers, who are archer-countering units. They’re also more expensive than regular archers, and that’s not going into the research that a good cavalry archer needs, as they’re also subject to some of the most expensive research options.
In Bannerlord you can get good horse archers only be recruiting young nobles. Then you have to spend time on levelling them up, because at the lower tiers they’re just not that good, and you risk a number of the dying before they reach a high enough level.
So between the two games I play that prominently feature horse archers, I’d say they’re managed pretty well, with the increased costs, slower training times, player skill, or levelling requirements.
Pretty sure, historically, they were also pretty powerful. I remember at one point reading about several nations that had serious issues with horse archers. A ranged unit of constant mobility, of course they’d be difficult to deal with.
How effective they are does depend on what kind of game you’re playing, however.
In Age of Empires II horse archers are only really good in those civilisations that have adequate research for them. And then it requires a good deal of player skill to micro the units to make use of their enhanced mobility.
In Mount and Blade Bannerlord it all depends on terrain. Horse archers are deadly on any sort of open terrain, but introduce trees or even a mild amount of rockiness and those horse archers are in a serious disadvantage.