10 people found this review helpful
Recommended
0.0 hrs last two weeks / 11.7 hrs on record (10.5 hrs at review time)
Posted: Aug 14, 2022 @ 6:38am
Updated: Aug 14, 2022 @ 6:39am

Friends of XCOM and JRPGs will find a nice fusion in this game. Troubleshooter is essentially just a clone of Firaxis' XCOM games, however it piles on a lot of character progression and theorycrafting that XCOM (intentionally) simplified away. Where XCOM has very few short 'n' sweet ways to customize and specialize characters, Troubleshooter goes ham with very detailed systems like skill crafting, skill set bonuses, gear customization, gear crafting, gear drops, skill drops from specific enemies, etc etc. adding a lot of depth.

I would not consider the added depth to be an *improvement* over XCOM. Rather, it is a sidegrade. It offers something else for people who enjoy it. Others may consider it just added tedium.

Troubleshooter is, however, designed for more "bulk" of play, by being extensively customizable for animations etc. to happen *very quickly*, leading to you being able to play more missions with more things happening in them. XCOM is more of a slow, more cinematic experience, where each action takes a decent amount of time.

The biggest win for Troubleshooter is in the art and aesthetic. Troubleshooter's character designs are great, if simple, and the art style is very appealing for fans of an anime / manhwa style. Not enough praise can be poured on the CGs representing the characters, or the sheer amount of them.

The biggest loss, however, may be in the writing and the localization. This my one biggest pet peeve I would like to see improved. The story of the game, unfortunately, does not draw me in AT ALL, with very uninspired, bland dialogue and a plot around a "Spoonist" cult which appears rather silly just by its name. It is hard to take any of this seriously.

However I feel that the biggest loss of impact in the story may come from the poor localization. I do not speak Korean, so I cannot compare the original vision of the plot and characters to what we receive in the English version. The English is ripe with stilted, awkward dialogue, very boring, matter-of-factly descriptions of events, and a complete lack of characterization or uniqueness between any of the characters due to the fact that they all speak in essentially the same way. I am forced to enjoy the characters only by the compelling art of their designs, as the writing and dialogue behind them is very uninspired, and I find myself uninterested in their personalities, since they do not seem to have much of one.

This is not even mentioning the various plain *mistakes* in the localization, coming from a lack of cohesive plan behind it, leading to various game mechanics being described in either awkward, or different terms from sentence to sentence. It is clear that, at some points, the localisers did not really know what context they were translating their lines in.

I implore the team behind TROUBLESHOOTER to research ways to provide a better localization of the English text, perhaps with the help of an external company. Focus on bringing across the characters and story in a more lively and interesting way. And make sure that the localization team understands the gameplay and mechanics in order to be able to helpfully translate ability, skill and gear descriptions.

I will recommend the game for XCOM and anime fans, however TROUBLESHOOTER could be *much* better if not for the missed potential due to the above issues.
Was this review helpful? Yes No Funny Award
Developer response:
Dandylion  [developer] Posted: Aug 15, 2022 @ 6:33pm
The development team feels the same way about the criticism that you have devoted much of your assessment. When the development team first planned the game, the idea of the localization was simple.

' Even if the sentence is a little awkward, there will be no problem in playing the game if the meaning works. '

However, this turned out to be a big mistake shortly after the game was released. Many gamers turned off the game and refunded the game as soon as they saw the strange translation they faced from the first screen of the game, which forced us to accept countless bad reviews.

The development team admitted that it was a mistake and improved it with the help of gamers. You might think, "Is this all you can do to improve?" Yes, that's right. The translation before the improvement work was really bad. This work is still in progress. Since the first language of the development team is Korean, there will be certain limitations to improvement in other languages except Korean. However, as long as the game continues to be updated, improvements in translation will continue.

Thank you for taking the development team to another step forward with your good review despite the game's extremely fatal shortcomings. Although the translation will bother you a little bit, there is definitely a lot of content in the game. We will improve it further. So if you have time, please enjoy the contents slowly.

Thank you for this review.