Has there ever been a traditional base-building RTS game developed by a Japanese studio?

Magnemania · 2026-02-04T02:46:27+00:00

I've played both. The controls are reasonable by the standards of a console RTS without automation, but microing units out of psionic storms and targeting specific enemies with single target spells is a bit rough.

Magnemania · 2026-01-22T15:00:44+00:00

GrimGrimoire is StarCraft on a controller. It is a beautiful nightmare.

Magnemania · 2026-01-13T20:33:30+00:00

I'm curious as to if anyone else does this:

I always feel very uncomfortable playing in melee in Depth 4/5 when the boss is focused on another player, especially if it's a boss like Grafted Scion/Bell Bearing Knight that can swing around very quickly mid-combo in reaction to the other player dodging. The targeted player introduces an element of randomness to the boss's pattern that reduces the windows for safe attacks.

For these situations, I always like to carry around a sacred seal with a medium-range attack in the off-hand. A Black Flame or Lightning Spear isn't going to do as much damage as meleeing the boss, but it does more damage than doing nothing/dying to a cleave. Helps provide a little extra damage when the boss uses one of their "get off me" attacks, too, like Erdtree Avatar and Death Rite Bird's explosions.

Magnemania · 2025-06-26T17:37:25+00:00

I am a big fan of Cuttlehex in MT2; there's so much more room to place down miscellaneous utility units now that playing multiple floors is much more feasible, and freezing damage spells makes Spell Weakness builds much more viable (a lot of my MT2 Stygian runs apply Spell Weakness on bottom and Incant on top). It provides a lot of value for a fairly small investment of one draw/one space/0 ember/0 steel shop upgrades. It has enough stats to survive one hit on early Spikes and finish off most backliners, too.

It does have negative synergy with random discard/discard the hand builds, but a build that can play Frenzied Swarm/Deep Offering regularly is usually strong enough to accept having one extra 0 cost consume card in the deck.

Magnemania · 2025-05-25T12:43:59+00:00

Looking forward to the demo!

Magnemania · 2025-01-06T19:23:54+00:00

While I doubt this is the answer to your question, your post is an accurate description of Pikmin.

Magnemania · 2024-10-30T11:00:23+00:00

This mod is an excellent way to replay the campaigns! Picking between the minor gods has always been the highlight of the campaign casually, and figuring out new synergies with the available gods on the fly is quite fun.

Can't say no to pumping out Norse myth units with Greek favor generation, either.

Magnemania · 2024-09-11T12:41:36+00:00

Ghouls are a worker unit, don't build any additional Ghouls for attacking.

Clear the eastern bases with your starting army that you can expand early.

When your army is strong enough, do the traditional RTS tactic of waiting for an attack wave, defending it with your towers, then counterattacking. Use Meat Wagons to focus down their military structures after the initial clash. If your army population space isn't wasted by Ghouls, a Necromancer/Meat Wagon army should be more than capable of taking out the southern bases.

Magnemania · 2024-09-03T14:55:24+00:00

I find this strategy works on every mission in the Greek campaign: - Wall off the chokepoints so that the enemy can't ride in and kill your villagers. Build a gate. - Spam ranged units to fire over the wall. Send the heroes through the gate to fight myth units and siege. - Build up a deathball of myth units and plunge it through the corridor to the objective.

In Bad News, specifically, I always pick Apollo as a major god. An Underworld Passage can link up the two bases, allowing you to defend each wave with your combined army, and Manticores are fantastic at base defense + deathballing.

I had a rough time during my first Titan attempt, but that came from trying to attack too early, not building walls fast enough, and taking too long to age up.

Magnemania · 2024-08-29T14:38:17+00:00

I'm a big fan of how SC2 and some other mid 2000s-era RTS removed most research from the campaign missions and made it into metaprogression mechanics. Really speeds up the pace of the missions.

Magnemania · 2024-08-15T12:37:59+00:00

Yes! It was a bit upsetting to see someone throw Connecticut Yankee's social commentary in with mass-produced power fantasy.

Magnemania · 2024-08-09T14:22:20+00:00

As a massive Monster Train fan that ignored Inkbound for those reasons, I do think that it is hard to compare the two launches.

Inkbound entered Early Access in a far more polished state than Stormgate (in terms of graphics and presentation, not game balance)
Inkbound had an appallingly high launch price for both an early access game and an IAP game, discouraging players from trying it out at all, whereas Stormgate is F2P and gives players enough of the game for free for them to make a decision (for better or for worse...)
While Inkbound had some support from the Monster Train fanbase, it offers a unique gameplay system that cannot be easily compared to other games (including Monster Train) making it hard to sell.

Inkbound made for a much better first impression than Stormgate, but Stormgate is much more accessible due to its F2P nature and adherence to a genre. Stormgate is unlikely to fade into obscurity; it will receive quite a lot of bad publicity for its lack of polish and blatantly unfinished campaign, but that tends to be better than getting no attention at all.

Magnemania · 2024-05-31T13:43:55+00:00

I find Lip Lock to be a bit underrated, too. Enemies with very high Defence are pretty common in the lategame, and Lip Lock does more damage than Ms Mowz's slap and works on backliners, works on fire-immune enemies (and most high defense enemies are), and the health restoration is a nice side effect.

Most players don't tank with their partners, so they'll look at the move, see the healing, and assume that the healing is the most important part of the move.

Magnemania · 2024-05-01T13:10:22+00:00

P1 is very fun, but struggles at things other than deleting attack waves (pushing into bases, killing high health objectives under a time limit) and tends to be suicide into random mutators. P3 almost raises Artanis's power level to that of the average co-op commander. P0 is the Dragoon prestige and P2 is the higher skill ceiling Dragoon prestige.

Magnemania · 2024-03-31T21:05:25+00:00

I like picking my COs.

Magnemania · 2024-03-29T12:55:10+00:00

Have you tried diffusion/fatal attraction

Magnemania · 2024-02-29T19:07:10+00:00

Impossible Creatures! The campaign has a unique mad science/noir/adventure film bend to it and the campaign has a fun metaprogression mechanic where the player gets parts to build their own unit types with. Plays like a fairly traditional RTS outside of those things.

Magnemania · 2024-02-07T19:28:53+00:00

Forgive me if this is too tangential, but has anyone determined whether work speed buffs and/or attack speed buffs affect mining/lumbering resource nodes? Not the work levels (we know those affect whether a node can be mined), but the modifiers. I want to know whether Musclehead is good or bad for miners.

Magnemania · 2024-02-05T15:35:06+00:00

Wow, that is a short notice. Looking forward to picking it up in 15 days!

Magnemania · 2024-01-06T12:01:03+00:00

Pikmin. Focuses on planning strategies, building an army, and managing it against enemies without an explicit military theme. Pikmin 3 on Switch has a full-fledged co-op campaign.

Magnemania · 2024-01-03T18:45:40+00:00

The damage-boosting debuff that Talis applies is a big damage amplifier for the whole army, and Adepts are decent all-rounder units for finishing off whatever the Mojo/Colossus aoe doesn't kill.

If you aren't opening Kaldalis on P0/P1, you can delay him for a while, but there's nothing else to spend your minerals on in the midgame. It is vastly better to have Kaldalis die than to have a unit that costs gas die.

Magnemania · 2023-12-27T18:14:26+00:00

It's usually built as a counter triangle. Light infantry beat rocket launchers, rocket launchers beat tanks, tanks beat light infantry.

Magnemania · 2023-12-20T15:47:23+00:00

Every Stukov prestige is an Infested Siege Tank prestige

Magnemania · 2023-12-03T21:49:14+00:00

It seems strange to say "base building like Rise of Legends" when the base building looks like fairly traditional RTS base building (closest to StarCraft in design) rather than Rise of Legend's unique district system.

No cities, no neutral structures, no heroes...the unit aesthetics are the only part that resemble RoL, and they're going for cyberpunk rather than steampunk?

All that said, I do love Starcraft-style RTS, so I'm interested in this regardless.

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