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Yggdra Union

by Orcs and Ostriches

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Original Thread: Let's Play - Yggdra Union

 

Introduction



Let's play: Yggdra Union – We'll Never Fight Alone
What is it?
Released originally for the GBA in 2006, followed by a remake for the PSP in 2008, Yggdra Union is a turn based strategy game where your turns are influenced by cards, and battles are semi-interactive. It was localized by Atlus, and developed by Sting, and it shows. It's a mash of various mechanics all thrown in together, and they stick together quite nicely.
Part of Sting's Dept. Heaven series, it falls somewhere between Riviera, the Promised Land – LP'd by Didja Redo and Knights in the Nightmare . It chronicles the tale of Princess Yggdra who, after escaping a violent invasion from a neighboring empire, builds up an army of friendly forces to liberate her country.

What drew me into the game initially was its impressive for the time sprite graphics, which I'm admittedly a sucker for. The game mechanics hooked me, the soundtrack is solid, and I was ultimately surprised at the characterization. It's no work of Shakespeare, obviously, but it's above the level your general portable SRPG gets. There are a lot of little details about many of the characters that are easy to miss if you aren't looking for them, and they never get in the way of the meat of the game. The game easily made my top lists, and while I try to hock this game on as many people as I can, I'll admit it's far from perfect.

It suffers from a wildly variable difficulty curve, jumping from too easy, to frustrating, and back to easy. In regular SRPG fashion, you're expected to be clairvoyant in preparing for battles you wouldn't have seen your first time through. Some of the levels seem like they were put into the game purely to annoy the shit out of the player. The AI is also largely terrible, and it seems far to eager to throw away what would have been an advantage. All in all, though, the core game mechanics can offer a great game, which I'm hoping to show here.

The LP

I'll be playing the PSP version. Besides improved battle mechanics and additional content, the switch to the PSP has brought along vastly improved sprite work over the GBA's already good sprites. The majority of each update will be screenshots, but I'll be throwing in a few videos to illustrate various battles, as well as any interesting special events. I'll be aiming for two mission updates a week, maybe three.

As for spoilers, there are only about a half dozen spoiler worthy events in the game, so I'd rather just not talk about them at all until they happen.

Besides the regular chapter updates, I'm going to have updates dedicated to explaining game mechanics as they come up. There's a myriad of forces at play in the game, so besides a cursory introduction to each mechanic as it's unlocked, there's probably value in explaining the details about how things work as well.

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