All of them.

Since I posted a quick five minute vlog about this, I couldn’t quite get in to too many details, so I thought I’d post them here.

Why do I need a battery backup?

As alluded to in the vlog, you need a battery backup because the world isn’t a perfect place. All it takes is one power outage, one cat-based incident, or one klutz of a human to eliminate the power to your computing device**. Losing power obviously would mean that you’d lose anything unsaved, but you also run the risk of losing saved data as well due to something called ‘caching’.

What is caching?

The idea behind caching is simple – you probably use the same concept on a day-to-day basis without realizing it. We’ll use an example. Say you and a partner are washing dishes by hand because some klutz killed the power to your computer and your house. You’re responsible for rinsing the suds off of the soapy dishes and your partner is drying them. However, you’re far better than your partner at everything in the world and are much faster at rinsing than they are at drying. You can do one of two things about this.

1. Slow down. Match your partner’s speed in handling the dishes.
2. Keep going at your current rate, but stack up a set of dishes for your partner to dry. Once you’re done with your part, walk away and do something more interesting than the dishes, like buy a battery backup.

Option #2 is exactly what a computer does when it caches data. In the case of a PC, your computer’s memory is far faster than your hard drive or SSD***. So, rather than just having your computer sit around for a while waiting for it to finish writing to the hard drive, it caches the data and writes to your hard drive over time while you’re doing other things with it.

Caching sounds pretty nifty, but what does that have to do with battery backups?

Well, let’s go back to that example above. Say the reason why your power is out is because your partner is the klutz. While you have that set of dishes cached up behind them, he trips over an invisible cat and knocks all of those plates to the ground, shattering them. If you weren’t caching, your partner would have only broken one plate at most (the one they were drying).

Mostly same with computers. If you were to suffer an unexpected halt of your computer, you would lose everything currently being saved – including things you may have hit save on a few seconds before the crash. Now, where computers differ is how computer file systems work. You can actually lose a lot more than just the plates cached – if you happen to time it just right, your computer is capable of crashing its file system, potentially losing all of your data. This is a bit more common in older file systems – FAT-based ones are notorious for this.

What uses a FAT-based file system?

Lots of things, actually. Memory cards (both SD and console), USB flash drives, older computers, your 360…

Okay, okay, you’ve convinced me… but what do I get?

Ah, now THAT is a much more complicated question. Here’s the short version:

Buy a backup solution that lasts long enough. ‘Long enough’ is defined as the longer of either the amount of time it takes you to shut down everything plugged in to it or the expected length of your average power outage, whichever is longer.

How do I do that?

Uninterruptable Power Supplies typically have a “VA” rating (Volts*Amps) that they’ll have in big numbers. Ignore it.

I’m serious, just ignore it. Yes, there is a reason for it and if you know enough about UPSes you’d probably use that instead of watts, but chances are you would be better off just looking at what it says for Watts. If it doesn’t give that number somewhere, it should give a PF (Power Factor), which should be a percentage (or expressed as a decimal). Take the VA and multiply by the PF and you’ll get the wattage rating.

In general, the higher the wattage, the longer it lasts. Most UPSes have specs as to how long they last at what wattages – just look at the box and see how long a particular wattage rating lasts. If you don’t know how much power you’re drawing from your devices, buy a device that lets you measure power draw, like a kill-a-watt.

Wait, did you say ‘look on the box’? As in… offline?

Yep. UPSes are the one piece of computer equipment (well, more like ‘power equipment’) that is cheaper to buy offline in the US than online (and likely that way in other nations as well). It typically isn’t by much without a sale, but with a sale I’ve seen UPSes up to 50% off of the best online price I’ve seen them, mostly due to how ridiculously expensive shipping is. Office supply stores frequently carry them.

Any other features I should look for?

A few, depending on what you’re protecting.

• If you’re protecting PCs, you’ll want one that can plug in to your PC over USB. This lets your PC know how much power it has left and automatically sleep and/or hibernate when your UPS runs low on battery power, ensuring that you don’t lose any data.
• You’ll obviously want one with enough battery-backed electrical outlets for your devices. Typically, this means you’ll want to protect the computing devices plus a monitor/TV of some sort. Don’t put your stereo or other high-draw devices on a UPS, you’ll just kill it faster. If you are using it for a PC with an automatic sleep bit, you might be able to get away with not having a monitor on it at all.
• Most UPSes offer data protection (Coaxial cable, Phone, and/or Ethernet). Make sure you use it if needed, as the guarantee on them typically stipulates that it is only valid if every external access point (objects connecting to the device) is protected)
• Some higher end ones give you a graphical display. Only needed if you’re a geek like me that likes to know what exactly is going on.

Personally, I buy cheap ones for my router/modem (so I can remain online during an outage, plus protecting external access points) and expensive ones with the LCD display for my computers / consoles. In my current place, that means the modem gets a cheap 40 USD UPS and my two active desktops get their own highish end (110 USD) UPS for their respective areas (file server + router, gaming PC + consoles).

Wait, what about that USB power thingy?

That’s mostly me being silly, but an interesting device to have anyway for other reasons. A portable USB charger is typically used for charging portable devices from an external battery. I primarily use mine to keep my devices charged while I’m traveling, but I also use it when I’m recording vlog things due to the amount of power draw I have recording 1080p video.

If you have other questions, let me know in the comments below or on the video.

* – By non-simple, I actually mean devices that do any form of caching to write to them. This is pretty much every modern device with storage outside of things like basic digital recorders and apparently 14k USD fridges. Basically, if it has a filesystem that you can read on a computer somewhere, it is probably non-simple.

** – laptops, desktops, phones, tablets, complex watches, 14k USD fridges, and so on.

*** – As a quick rule of thumb, RAM is a full order of magnitude faster than hard drives. Processor cache is a full order of magnitude faster than RAM. SSDs are somewhere between HDs and RAM on speeds (typically).

I’ve decided to kick off writing things to my blog again my posting a ridiculously long entry (3600 words) no one will read!  HOORAY! In short, I detail how my file server currently works, what doesn’t work, and make a few builds off of Newegg for replacing her, then figure out why the hell I chose the parts that I did.

Let’s back up and start from the beginning.  Oh boy is this going to be long.  I’ll provide a table of contents, as all three of you that might read this might want to skip out on the massive walls of text.

• History of Varia
• Problems Today
• What the PC needs to do
• Proposed Builds
• Comparison to Existing Fileserver

History

Nearly ten years ago, I built a computer while I was in college. I spent a bunch of money on an incredibly sturdy (and heavy) case so it could survive life in an un-airconditioned dorm. Varia was a nice computer at the time, and it was my primary computer for four years. After I built my next gaming computer (Vankiel), I moved Varia to a life as a fileserver and general host of all things running Linux in my house (which… wasn’t much).

A few more years go by and my fileserver was showing her age. She had no onboard SATA ports (I had bought a SATA 1 controller and a SATA hard drive late in her life, as that was actually cheaper than buying another PATA drive), her processor was slow and horribly inefficient (Pentium 4 FTL!), and she only had a gig of DDR1 RAM (which was max, due to the incredibly idiotic way RAM worked on that machine).

So, actually having a job and some money, I upgraded her – and by upgrade, I mean tore out practically all of her guts and put in a new computer.  Neo-Varia retained the case from the old computer and that add-on SATA1 controller, dumping everything else. She’s running an AMD Phenom II X4 920, using 2×2 GB of DDR2 RAM (more on that part later), and four gigantic (for the time) 1 TB hard drives (plus a 250 GB system drive).

She has her problems (mostly due to ridiculously weird issues with the SATA controller, or the fact that Samba refuses to work right on first boot), but she mostly worked just fine – she used substantially less power than her P4 incarnation, was a lot more powerful (Quad core processor!  WOO!), and was able to finally be used appropriately for some of the non-fileserver related things I did on her – as a virtual machine host, basically, but only for one VM at a time.

Problems Today

That was then. Over time, Varia has become…  problematic. My needs have expanded, and some of my design decisions in Varia’s original build have come back to haunt me.

1. RAM.  Oh ye gods has that haunted me. At the time, I had no need for more than 4 GB of RAM – hell, Varia barely ever went above 1.5 GB of RAM – so I had decided that going with two sticks of 2 GB would be plenty. If I needed more RAM, I could always buy more DDR2, right?
   Allow me to show you all a comparison.  DDR2 2×4 GB sticks.  DDR3 2×4 GB sticks. DDR2 prices are over quadruple the price of DDR3. If I wanted 16 GB of RAM in Varia (her max), I’d be spending a minimum of 260 USD. Hell, that’s bound to be pretty close to just buying a new motherboard / processor / RAM, right?
2. Power Utilization.  She’s still not draining that much power, but technology marches on. She drains more power at idle as my gaming machine does at full non-gaming load, and a lot of that is being turned in to waste heat. Admittedly, it isn’t that big of a deal, but I wish I would have bought a bit more of an energy efficient processor at the time. AMD procs from back then aren’t known for being low in idle power draw, and Varia is idle around 85% of the time.
3. Available SATA Ports. Uuf da. You see, motherboards at the time had a maximum of six SATA ports on them. This was plenty enough for me, as I had four storage HDs, one OS HD, and one DVD burner.  Unfortunately for me, I had to get one with only five ports. I put my DVD burner onto my extra SATA controller (1.5 Gbps is plenty fast enough for a DVD drive) and went on my way. Later on, however, I also bought a totally awesome hard drive dock in order to make backups (and recovering data for other people) a lot easier and simpler. Unfortunately, it now meant I was using eight SATA ports and that crappy little SATA adapter of mine started having… issues. Whenever I need (or want) to rebuild Varia’s OS, I need to start juggling devices around in order for the right devices to be attached to the right locations. Or, in short, ginormous headache that makes getting the computer back online a nightmare.
4. Case Age. Yes, Varia’s case was damn awesome at the time. I mean, sure, it weighs more empty than all of the rest of my computers I own combined, but that just makes it sturdy and capable of taking damage. Only, it has. I used to mail my computer back to South Florida every summer, in order for me to have something to do during summer vacation – meaning this case has been through the US Mail eight times and has the damage to show for it. I’ve even claimed it on an insurance form once due to the damage dealt to it (yes, I did ask if this was okay ahead of time; no I’m not committing fraud). It has problems holding optical drives in place, the front cover is completely smashed to bits, the holes for a couple of things are stripped, the side cover no longer holds all that well, and the back part is slightly warped (where you need force to screw in video cards). It wouldn’t survive another move.
5. Case Features (or lack-there-of).  Did I mention that this case predates the idea of having USB ports on the front?  Yeah, that’s DAMN annoying. As is the fact that the hard drive cages are basically impossible to remove without removing half of the guts of the computer first, mostly because this predates the idea that a consumer might want to swap out hard drives on the fly.
6. Linux compatibility.  Fun fact – the on-board graphics for Varia aren’t fully compatible with Linux. I can’t run anything that requires 3D acceleration, including some of the software I want to run in a virtual machine.  Oops.

So…  six good reasons to upgrade things. At the very least, I need to upgrade that damn case already.

The PC’s Goals

The most important task of building any computing device (or even just buying one at a store pre-built) is to figure out what you want it to do. This is the part that people have the hardest time doing when they’re designing their own computers – and the downfall of computers years from now when you need them to do something you never anticipated. Given the history posted above, I’m definitely not flawless in this regard.  :)

This computer needs to do a few things.

1. Serve up files. By far, the most important task this computer needs to do is act as a fileserver. Of course, this is the one task this computer already does extremely well, but if a new build doesn’t let me do even this much, then I’ve failed in building the computer.
   • In order to serve up files the way I like them, I need this machine running Linux (other later considerations eliminate both Solaris and BSD). I like my non-NTFS filesystems thankyouverymuch.  >_>
   • The machine needs a reliable network adapter, wired, and a way of having at least seven SATA ports (OS drive, 4 fileserver drives, two HD Dock plugs). If the motherboard doesn’t support that many, I’m going to need at least one add-on card.
   • The case needs to support a minimum of five internal or external 3.5″ bays (OS drive + 4 fileserver HDs). Having more would be nice, but not necessary.
2. Serve as a file recovery / backup device. Running alternate operating systems has a hell of a lot of disadvantages, but one of the biggest advantages is that I can recover from things Windows can’t. In that regard, I can often plug in a hard drive or memory card, run some recovery software on it, and have it be as good as new. In that regard, I have my earlier mentioned hard drive dock of awesomeness, plus a memory card reader. The memcard reader is completely optional and I can live without it, but the HD dock is essential for backing things up on.
   • This is going to require at least one 5.25″ external bay. Two would be nice, but one is all that is needed.
   • It would be nice to have an external 3.5″ bay, but completely unnecessary.
3. Serve as a virtual machine host.I currently have a virtual machine perpetually running on the fileserver for my tablet, so I can use my tablet sort-of like a standard x86 machine. Sure, it runs slow, but it definitely serves its purpose…  although it could be better.
   • Needs lots and lots and lots of RAM.  No, more.  Seriously, Firefox alone uses 2 GB of RAM and I might have multiple browsers open.
   • Should have a working video adapter that supports 3D acceleration in Linux. Luckily, most do now, so this isn’t as big of a concern.
   • The processor needs to handle multiple threads at once. Just because I’m serving up content (which, given that I’m not using a hardware RAID controller, means I’m using CPU power) doesn’t mean I’m not going to also need CPU power for my VM, or possibly for anything else hosted on the machine.  Two cores are probably fine, four would be preferred though.
4. Be flexible for future uses. Kind of obvious, if you think about it, but this computer is going to be my “server” for pretty much everything – it runs 24/7/365, it is the only PC I’m going to rely on being up even when I’m not home. This means that practically everything that I want hosted is going to have to be on this or my router (which isn’t a PC).

Proposed Builds

So, how would I fulfill these conditions?  Well, I have five builds I’m looking at now, each…  unique, in some manner, and able to fulfill one of the goals. I know, I know, this is already ridiculously long, but eh, time for a marathon post!

NOTE: I’m re-using a power supply in almost all of these builds. This will increase the base price of the server by a smidge if you were building it yourself, unless if you are also upgrading an existing machine.

These builds are listed in order from cheapest to most expensive.

Modular File Server

• Price as of posting: 318.96 USD
• 3.5″ Bays: 6 (1 available)
• 5.25″ Bays: 1 (0 available)
• Size: Small + Medium.
• RAM Configuration: 2x 8 GB (DDR3)
• Processor: AMD E-350
• SATA ports: 8 (1 available).
• Flexibility: 1/5
• CPU Power: 1/5
• Power draw: 3/5?
• Updatability: 1/5

The modular file server started out at me going, “you know, I don’t necessarily need these drives all inside of the same case.” The idea is that I have two boxes – one for the Proc/Motherboard/OS Drive/RAM/Dock, the other for the fileserver HDs. This build includes an external enclosure that holds up to four hard drives, plugging in via an eSATA interface (which this motherboard has). The server itself is a miniITX motherboard/case that, well, is around the size of a Nintendo Gamecube but longer.

This is the cheapest of the builds and it shows – the processor is incredibly weak (about a fourth of the performance of my existing proc) and it just barely is able to handle all of the things I need it to handle. In addition, I’m a bit concerned about having my storage all subject to the lost of a single cable – I mean, I have cats, they’re going to hit it at some point. On the plus side, this is really all I need – given the price difference between this and the pie-in-the-sky build, if I needed something more I could just build it at that time and still save money. Also, it does have a single half-sized PCIe slot open, so I could expand it a little bit at least.  This is still seventy bucks less than the next cheapest though, so I am still considering it.

Basic Fileserver

• Price as of posting: 386.96 USD
• 3.5″ Bays: 10 (5 available)
• 5.25″ Bays: 4 (3 available)
• Size: Huge
• RAM Configuration: 4×4 GB (DDR3)
• Processor: AMD A4-3300
• SATA ports: 8 (1 available).
• Flexibility: 3/5
• CPU Power: 3/5
• Power draw: 2/5?
• Updatability: 5/5
• Reuses existing power supply.

This is actually what I built first – basically, just building a new computer minus the hard drives to do what I need it to do. It has a ridiculously awesome case that is contributing heavily to the price, one that I could easily see lasting another ten years. It has front facing USB ports, the processor is upgradable, I could put in 4×8 GB of RAM if I somehow needed 32 GB of RAM in a desktop, it has tons of slots open on the motherboard for just about anything I throw at it – basically, I can do whatever I want.  The problem is that it takes up a decently large amount of space, isn’t the greatest on power draw, and I’m still using a somewhat weak processor (now 2/3rds of the performance of my existing one).

Itty Bitty Teenie Weenie Solid Black Fileserver

• Price as of posting: 389.96 USD
• 2.5″ Bays: 1 (1 available)
• 3.5″ Bays: 7 (2 available)
• 5.25″ Bays: 2 (1 available)
• Size: Small
• RAM Configuration: 2×8 GB (DDR3)
• Processor: AMD E-350
• SATA ports: 8 (1 available).
• Flexibility: 2/5
• CPU Power: 1/5
• Power draw: 5/5
• Updatability: 2/5
• Re-uses existing power supply.

After designing the modular server, I was still left scratching my head – I don’t like that single cable being a nice, conveniently-unprotected, single point of failure. What if I was able to do all of this but inside of the same small form factor? Surely something like that doesn’t exist, I mean, this is a mini-ITX case aft… wait, why does that miniITX case have seven 3.5″ bays..?

Costing three dollars more than the plain design, this.. well.. it isn’t a powerful computer. I mean, I’m still using the same crappy E-350 processor that was barely satisfying my needs before, only now I have a really nice case to go with it. Don’t get me wrong, the fact that I can now hold a full sized PCI-e card is quite nice (but I have to use said slot…), as is the fact that I can throw another two HDs, one laptop HD, and an optical drive in is extremely nice (but I only have one SATA port free…), but I’m still not getting much out of this overall.  Still, only three bucks more than the gigantic build above, and by far the best with respect to power draw. Alas, not much I can do about the processing power on this one given the form factor, right..?

PowerServer

• Price as of posting: 570.96 USD
• 3.5″ Bays: 10 (5 available)
• 5.25″ Bays: 4 (3 available)
• Size: Huge
• RAM Configuration: 4×4 GB (DDR3)
• Processor: Intel Core i5 2400S
• SATA ports: 8 (1 available).
• Flexibility: 5/5
• CPU Power: 5/5
• Power draw: 1/5
• Updatability: 4/5
• Reuses existing power supply.

Basically, this computer is a full powered computer (albeit one using a lower-power processor) in the same case as the Basic fileserver. It should be a LOT more powerful (by far the most powerful machine in this set), reasonably power efficient (don’t let that 1/5 scare you; it should still be rather low) and incredibly versatile.

There are two processors listed in that wishlist – that is because if I was building this, I’d be grabbing that nice Core i5 2500K and putting the processor and motherboard into my current gaming machine and passing its processor (Core i5 760) and motherboard into this fileserver. My version would use up more power but would otherwise be similar in every other way.

The main downside to this build is… well, it isn’t cheap. Not exactly super expensive (see below), but we’re still talking another 185 USD over the Basic Fileserver build when it still accomplishes the same thing in the same form factor. It also isn’t the most power efficient thing in the world, but still leaps and bounds better than my existing fileserver.

Pie in the Sky

• Price as of posting: 909.94 USD (795.94 USD if you aren’t insane)
  
• 2.5″ Bays: 1 (1 available)
• 3.5″ Bays: 7 (2 available)
• 5.25″ Bays: 2 (1 available)
• Size: Small
• RAM Configuration: 2×8 GB (DDR3 SODIMM)
• Processor: Intel Core i7-2720QM
• SATA ports: 9 (2 available).
• Flexibility: 4/5
• CPU Power: 4/5
• Power draw: 4/5
• Updatability: 3/5
• Re-uses existing power supply.

Allow me to put a disclaimer here: There is no way in hell I would build this machine. This is what I’d build if I had a whole lot of spare money yet still had some sanity (some; I did pick out a four hundred dollar processor – if you want something more realistic, drop to the Core i5 2520M for a similar level of performance but two fewer cores and 190 USD less). I might even be able to use a desktop Core i5 in this build for less, but then you’d have some cooling issues that might not be the greatest thing in the world to deal with on a fileserver.

I could realistically build this computer. It has a lot of charm, having a laptop processor and motherboard in it, using a small case, housing everything internally. This is probably the most efficient performance-per-watt build here, but it…  costs a lot of money. You’re also locked in on processor (you’re using a freaking laptop processor, those things aren’t meant to be replaceable) and have no available PCIe slots (since you used it already to have enough SATA ports). Still, second best processor listed here, second best on power, second best on flexibility – a lot to be…

Yeah, I’m still never going to build this machine.

Comparison

So, how do these line up with my existing fileserver?

• Processor: PowerServer> Pie-in-Sky >>> Existing Server >  Basic Server >> Itty-Bitty / Modular.
  Basically, my existing fileserver sits idle for a huge chunk of the day and, even when it is busy, it still doesn’t do much. Still, I’m a bit concerned that the two cheap builds are a bit… too cheap. They’re kind of weak to run VMs on and expect the VM to do much.
• Memory: PowerServer /Basic Server > Everything else > Existing Server.
  My existing server has 4 GB of RAM. I intentionally made the rest of the builds 16 GB of RAM, although two of them can handle up to 32 GB of RAM, if you felt like it. Definitely not needed for my needs, but it might be needed in the future.
• Case Size: PowerServer / Basic Server > Existing Server >> Modular > Pie-in-Sky / Itty-Bitty.
  Really, I only have four cases in the list – the LianLi mini-ITX, the Fractal Design full ATX, and the Apex mini-ITX and the Sans Digital eSATA thing. My existing fileserver case is a smidge shorter than the Fractal Design case, but is otherwise still a full ATX case. I narrowed things down to those four (five) cases, as they’re the best I can find that fit my own design sensibilities. The only real pro to any of them is that the Fractal Design case is also heavily soundproofed.
• Power Sipping: Itty-Bitty >> Pie-In-Sky > Modular > Basic / PowerServer > Existing Server.
  Rated from least to most power drawing (hence the “Power Sipping” term) at idle, these are… guesses. I honestly don’ t know how much power the Pie-In-Sky and Basic builds take, as those are estimates of mine. Still, the Modular one has two PSUs to contend with (neither of which are user replaceable, so I’m assuming they are inefficient) and the Itty-Bitty machine is quite possibly the lowest power use machine I could possibly build.
• Adaptability: PowerServer /Basic Server > Existing Server > Pie-in-Sky > Itty-Bitty > Modular
  One could debate whether the modular machine (relying on eSATA for file serving) is more adaptable than ones that aren’t, given that you can just plug a different external enclosure into it. I, however, have no intention of removing said enclosure so I don’t count it. Really, this boils down to, “can I change the role of this computer after I build it?” The three larger machines, owing to the fact that they have ATX motherboards with enough slots to distract gamblers, can be modified into just about anything. The basic server, in particular, currently has the lowest processor of its class installed – meaning you could swap it with an octocore AMD proc and have fun serving up a whole lot of content as a more public VM host, for instance.

Conclusion

Home fileservers tend to be low powered machines that don’t really do much of anything save hosting content. That’s not what I want – I want a home VM host and fileserver. That means that I demand not only a bunch of storage, but also RAM and a bit of CPU.

Or, in short, I want to host my cake and eat it. About the ONLY thing this build doesn’t need compared to a regular desktop PC is a good video card.

Oh well, time for new posts.

“WAKEE WAKIE!”

(Margaret):  “Wha..  where am I?”
(Rachel): “You’re here!  YOU DOCENT, WE GOBLIN.”
(Margaret):  “I don’t remember anything from last night..  wait, I remember.. margaritas..  wait, what did you call me heathen?”
(Ash): “You Docent, no?”

Crap, I was tour guide level drunk. Eh, these goblins don’t look like they’ll kill me anyway…  they’re probably dumb enough where I can wing it.)

(Margaret):  “Of course! I’m the best guide money can buy!  Welcome to…”

Margaret peers out the side of the boat at the giant sign.

(Margaret): “Oh, welcome to Emerald Isle! Home of.. insects..  and sea shells, really this is a very odd place for a group like you, so I’m sure you all won’t be long – there is a national event going on here today.”
(Ash): “We here for event!  We want to gove…  vern…  ern…  want win prize!”
(Margaret): “Wait, Lord Markham’s tournament?  Of course you can’t join that! You would need invitations, which are only sent out to the best of the nobility throughout Erathia, you all aren’t even from Erathia.”
(Jason holds out four bloody pieces of paper)
(Rachel): “Holders of pretty paper had…  accident.  Fell down stairs.”
(Margaret): “Why are the papers bloo-”
(Rachel): “-LOTS of stairs in ocean! Sea of stairs!”

All right Margaret, maybe they’re smart enough to kill you if you aren’t useful.  Time to be useful…  ngh, this would be a lot easier without this hangover..

(Margaret): “Well, let us get off the boat and speak with Lord Markham.  By the way, what are your names?”
(Ash): “Me Ash.  That Rachel our smart one.  That Kathleen – she silent and deadly like farts.  Grinning Green Goblin over there named Jason – he just always so happy and grinning!”
(Jason):  “HehehehehEHEHEHEHEHEEEEEEE!”
(Margaret):  “Wha…  why did you let him have an axe!  He looks scary!”
(Rachel):  “Docent answer own question.”
(Margaret): “… Ooookay.  So, the door to the west leads to the…  uh..  local Tavern, yeah!  The tavern is a pretty safe place to sleep at night.  You can even buy food to eat when you sleep outdoors.  Lots of interesting people there with the local gossip – they also make some killer Sunrise Dragonslayers here, let me tell you.  If you want to e-”

Wait, where did they go?

Margaret looks around, walking around the small shop district of the Emerald Isle dock area and finds the four goblins chatting up a rather old crone.

(Ash):  “You old hag! You must be SMART!”
(Old Crone): “Hey, don’t call…  wait, yes, of course I’m smart!  I’m the wisest in all of the Isle!”
(Ash): “Me thought so.  We want you join us, give us tips, tell us what shinies are. We have shinies to pay you with.”
(Old Crone):  “Hmm…  how about you give me all of your rings and…  5% of everything you find while I’m with you.  I’ll tell you what your shinies are and give you some tips on fighting.”
(Rachel): “You sound REALLY smart!  Here you go!”
(Margaret):  “Wait, that’s just…  wait, where did you get that many rings?”
(Rachel): “Oh, Jason had them.  He found when nobles fell down stairs.”
(Margaret): “. . . let’s just go to Lord Markham before you decide to sell your invites for three green beans.”
(Ash): “They come in green?”

Margaret leads the party down to Lord Markham’s Headquarters along the water.

(Thomas the Judge): “His Grace, Lord Markham, Duke of the Western Lowlands bids you invited ..  guests…  I’m sorry, you must be the hired help, we need the floors mopped up by 5.”
(Ash):  “Yes, we hired.  We hired with invites!”
(Thomas): “That makes no sense – give me those!”

Thomas looks over the invites.

(Margaret):  “I’m afraid they are authentic invitations from Lord Markham himself – these four goblins wish to participate in your contest.”
(Thomas): “Goblins! I somehow doubt Lord Markham would approve of that, how did they get those invites?”
(Jason): “HeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeHEHAHAHAHUHUHHEHEHEEEEEEE!”
(Thomas):  “. . . so, welcome adventurers!  We have a scavenger contest for the rights to Castle Harmondale!  Lord Markham can fill in the details.”
(Markham): “Duuuuuude, you see, there’s this…  castle man…  it’s pretty big – a fixer-upper, but maaan…  it is awesome..”
(Margaret, to Thomas): “What’s with Lord Markham?”
(Thomas): “Opium.  Or Hashish.  Or really anything.”
(Margaret): “Does he even know what he’s giving away?”
(Thomas): “Oh, Harmondale is a dump anyway, only a complete idiot would want that place to begin with, and those idiots aren’t capable of finding much of anything on the list.”

Kathleen places several items on the table.

(Thomas):  “What is this?  A red potion – the easiest item on the list – and a bow.. and some sea shells…  a fancy hat… and a lute…  where did you find all of this so quickly?”
(Kathleen): “. . .”
(Thomas):  “Speak up!”
(Ash): “Kathleen…  not talk much.  She quiet.  She would say that she found stuff while finding wise sensei teacher.”
(Thomas): “You’ve only been here five minutes…  let me look at these closer.  Well, the shell is definitely from Emerald Island, it looks just like what Sally sells.”
(Rachel): “Yeah, want another? Me have two. Sally… fell off stairs, gave them to us for help! Yeah!”
(Thomas): “Oh, the poor dear, I hope she gets better!”
(Margaret):  “Um, Judge, I don’t think you under-”
(Thomas): “Now, this red potion – that I don’t need to check too hard.  It is red.  I’ve seen thousands.  The Lute…  hmm, plays pretty well, the hat is rather nice… but this bow – this is NOT the right bow!  I’m sorry, you’ll just have to get me another one.”

Kathleen walks back up, takes the bow, looks dejected, then walks back to the group.

(Thomas): “That leaves the tile piece and the longbow – collect these things and the Castle shall be yours!  Margaret, stay with this group and guide them on their way!”

Crap, what the hell did I just get in to?  These goblins ARE the murderous sort – I just know they killed Sally, who else did they kill?  Still, being with them seems a lot safer than going against them, and I’m terrible with a bow..  and something is up with that Rachel.  I don’t think she’s really as dumb as the rest of them, she speaks too fluidly.

Background

Might and Magic VII is a First-Person Action-RPG for the PC, released back in 1999.  It is on my list of favorite games, although pretty far down the list.  Strangely, while I’ve certainly slaughtered the game, I’ve actually not beaten it nearly as much as most people would think.

The general idea behind the game is that you typically create some form of a balanced party between “Might” (melee/weapon oriented) and “Magic” (healy/buffy/explody oriented) and play through the game stumbling along a decently large number of side quests on the way.

I’m..  not going to play it that way.  You see, I like playing these type of games with oddball parties that challenge me.  In MM6, for instance, I played with a half dead party and the other half of the characters being amongst the worst in the game.  I actually stopped because it stopped being fun – who knows, I might do that here.  This game, on the other hand, I’m going to run through the plot plus some of the more essential sidequests..  with a party of idiotic goblins.

The Party

Our party leader is Ash the Knight. The Knight class in MM7 is the pure combat class – they have all sorts of awesome ways to beat the crap out of you, take hits like a champ.. and that’s about it. They are the only completely 100% non-casting class in the game. Ash here is a typical Goblin Knight – extremely strong but has the personality and intellect of a box of rocks.  13, for reference, is the stat in the game with no positive or negative modifiers – the average stat, if you were to compare to a P&P roleplaying system. A 5 on that scale indicates that Jason’s mother obviously had a bit too much lead vodka to drink during his pregnancy, even for a Goblin (they start at 7 of each). Knights can eventually grandmaster the Sword, Shield, Spear, and Platemail.  Given that I’ve never used it in MM7, I’m having Ash aim toward Spear + Shield. If you would like to play MM7, Ash isn’t a terrible character to make – just don’t do Spear+Shield.  :)

Following the party leader is Jason the Ranger.  Rangers in MM7 are considered the weakest class of the game, being a mix of the Knight class and the Druid caster class.  Rangers start with.. absolutely no magic whatsoever and are weaker than Knights in every way (save being awesome with a crappy weapon and being better with bows than Knights). By the end of the game, they’re.. probably still worse than a Knight, but they can cast both Self-based spells (traditional Cleric-y spells) and Elemental-based spells (traditional Mage-y spells).. albeit crappily. Unlike normal Rangers, Jason is also a goblin whose mother drank too much Lead Vodka.  You’ll see this as a pattern. Unlike the Knight, the Ranger is built…  slightly poorly.  Casting stats are both Personality and Intellect, so I’m never going to be good at spell slinging, but I can’t even do that much until I’m promoted anyway – so not terrible, but not great.  Jason will be using the Axe method of melee combat.

Kathleen the Monk is the hoarder of the group, being the character I’m going to throw useful crap into her inventory for storage.  Monks in MM7 are unarmed combatants that are a combination of the Knight and Paladin classes and, as such, suck almost as much with magic as Knights, save the fact that they at least get something.  Monks can cast Self spells (so like a Cleric) up to either Basic or Expert level depending on what path in the game you take (in my case..  Basic).  Kathleen is..  well, she’s built terribly for a Monk.  Monks need personality and Kathleen must come from the same family as the rest of these goblins given her deep-as-a-puddle personality.  If you want to play MM7.. don’t make a Goblin Monk, unless if you already have some healer. Even then, Monks normally don’t have any magical power until after their first promotion.

Rounding out the party is Rachel the Thief, our resident merchant character.. who also likes licking lead paint wall candy.  Thieves in MM7 are a combination of a Knight and an Archer, having the power of a Knight and the magical ability of a turnip (which, may I note, is still better than the Knight and Monk). They are masters of the dagger and leather, and Rachel is no exception.  I’m going to try and use the Stealing skill for the first time… ever, I believe, which is the other thing Thieves are known for (gee, what a surprise).

General Thoughts and Notes

I’m not going to be able to keep up writing this all ‘in character’ of a bunch of people with the brain activity of a dead rat, so I’m mostly going to write this from the perspective of the various NPCs in your travels when you play the game.  Finally, this talkthrough has spoilers – lots of them.  It is almost as though I’m reading through the entire game.  :)

• Is it worth 150 USD? (maybe)
• Is it worth 100 USD? (definitely)
• Does it perform better than an iPad? (not even close)
• Does it fit in a breadbox? (what the hell are you going to do with a tablet in a breadbox?)
• Do cats like to sleep on it? (yes)

All of these things and more will be described in my review.

Unboxing and Initial Setup experience

I received my HP Touchpad while I was at work. I did spend a bit of time unboxing it but didn’t mess around with it too much beyond initial setup.

I will give HP some props, the box it came in was very well thought out.  It comes in a bookshelf-like box (like what you’d find a fancy hardcover book coming in, or what we more frequently find DVD sets come in only deeper) complete with a plastic covered Tablet, instruction manual, and cables for charging / data transfer.  It might not be Apple Pretty, but I’m still very impressed.

Hardware / Feel

The HP Touchpad is remarkably similar looking to the iPad (original generation).  Both are 9.7″ slate-style touchscreen tablets with 1024x768px screens with very few buttons.  The Touchpad is marginally thicker (by 0.1mm) and slightly shorter (by 3 mm).  Both devices have an LED-backlit IPS display (so viewing angles are not The Suck), both devices have a single button on the bottom of the screen.

Or, in short, a bunch of people were asking me if I bought an iPad when I had it at work.

The Touchpad is heavy for a slate.  It is a bit above the weight of the original iPad, which is downright chunky by comparison to current tablets like the Galaxy Tab 10.1, which weighs 200g less than the smaller Touchpad.

The buttons are responsive, the screen is super sensitive, and the USB port works like it should.  Only gripe here is that the Touchpad draws WAY too much power (2A from USB!) to be charged via a desktop.  Well, that and the fact that none of the buttons are labeled – no one I handed the Touchpad to knew how to turn on the screen immediately.  Way to drop the ball on UI HP.

Operating System and Software

WebOS

WebOS is the operating system that is running on the HP Touchpad along with the HP/Palm Pre and a couple of other devices.  It definitely has a different feel than either Android or iOS, although strangely familiar. You multitask via the “card” system, which means you press the single button in the center (hereafter called the Rolodex button) to bring up a list of “cards” that you scroll through, each card being an application (or, in the case of a few similar applications, a stack of cards).  You can press the Rolodex button again to bring up the full applications menu, which is a tabbed menu browser between Applications, Downloads (which are really apps you’ve downloaded, not files downloaded), Favorites, and Settings.  No huge scrolling lists of apps like iOS, no multiple panes of applications via scrolling left/right of Android, just a series of business cards in a Rolodex-like system where you flip through until your Personal Digital Assistant finds the contact you want and brings it to your attention.

Yes, I went there. The reason why WebOS feels familiar is because it feels like a PDA operating system, not a Cell Phone (iOS/Android) or PC (Windows/Linux/Mac) operating system.  The point of the OS isn’t to bring applications around but to manage your data and information in an easily accessible, readable, and organized fashion.

Web Browser

Unfortunately for me, I want a tablet, not a PDA.  I have a PDA, it is called my cell phone.  My phone is decent at web browsing, but I want something awesome at web browsing.

The Touchpad is not awesome at web browsing.

Using the built in web browser, I was suddenly reminded of Internet Explorer 6.  You know, that web browser most Windows geeks refuse to admit ever using, yet all secretly know that they have?  The horribly non-standards-compliant browser with absolutely no adblocking features or popup blocking features whatsoever (outside of the eventual patch), with only the most basic of features (multiple instances for multiple windows)?  Yeah, the Touchpad’s browser is worse.

Don’t get me wrong, it is usable.  I think if someone would have improved upon it, it’d actually be perfectly cromulent, but it just.. doesn’t work right.  Complex pages aren’t loaded properly, elements are hidden by other elements, pretty much anything heavy in CSS has at least some minor issue.  The browser spawns a new process whenever you open a new window, and is pretty ugly.  Even my phone works better than that, and that one pisses me off due to the four tab default maximum.

So, just download a new browser and be done with it, right?  Not so fast.  Apparently, the Touchpad can’t change default browsers.  That’s right, even if someone made a better browser, you’re stuck using the default one for at least some tasks.  Ye gods HP, did you not learn from Microsoft?  Stop making people use a crappy browser, let someone port Firefox or Chromium or Safari or anything.  Now, it is theoretically possible to use another browser and just deal with the OS launching the built in one for grabbing links from email and the like..  if only there was another browser that worked.

The browser became substantially better after I voided the warranty, but that’s a different section.

Document Reading/Editing – for SPOON!s

Allow me to give a disclaimer – I’m definitely not a normal user. I don’t use Word or Excel, I don’t use Powerpoint or Access.  I use Open/LibreOffice for pretty much all of my office needs on my computers (outside of OneNote – my precious precious OneNote…).

Unfortunately for me, the Touchpad comes with QuickOffice.  I’ve used QuickOffice before – it came with my phone as well. I also promptly uninstalled it after realizing how crappy its support for OpenDocumentFormat files was.  Well, QuickOffice for the Touchpad was that plus it was incapable of editing any file.  I say ‘was’ because there was an update released yesterday that corrected that… and removed access to all open document format files entirely.

I don’t blame HP for this – HP doesn’t own QuickOffice, and I’m sure someone could remedy that by making a much better office program, but come ON.  On the plus side, the built in web browser (even with how crappy it is) loads GoogDocs just fine, which can handle all of the ODFs – mostly because that’s the native document format for GoogDocs.

In a similar vein to QuickOffice is Adobe Acrobat Reader.  Now, once more, let me preface this – I hate Adobe.  Much quicker than the QO preface.  :)  Acrobat is another one of the preloaded applications on the tablet, and one that I plan(ned) on making a large amount of use of.  One of my use cases for this tablet was to work as an eBook reader and most of my digital books are in PDF.  They also happen to be large roleplaying books in bright colors, which is the reason why I didn’t go with an eBook reader like a Kindle.  Loading up Acrobat and pointing it at my 578 page PDF of the Pathfinder Core Rules, I was not surprised to see it chug a bit.  I mean, come on, my laptops chug opening that monster of a PDF.  It loads a bit slower than my laptop, but generally looks and feels fine.

I was almost happy to report that the app did exactly what it was supposed to do in a reasonable amount of resources and time – which would probably be the first time I would have ever said that about an Adobe product – until I noticed one small tiny problem.  It has no bookmarks support.  Neither creation nor viewing existing ones.  It also can’t search OCRed text, use jump links in a PDF, nor let me do something as simple as type in a page number.

So, while my roleplaying books look all nice and pretty…  they’re worthless on the device because I can’t jump around or search anything.  Again, I don’t blame HP for this one, and I really hope Adobe steps up their game on their poor implementation of Acrobat Reader – or someone creates an alternative app on the Touchpad for PDFs.  To be fair, I don’t even like reader on my Android phone, so not that surprising.

Kindle App…  works exactly like it does on my phone, only bigger.  No complaints there, it looks nice and I can read everything perfectly fine.  Go Amazon.

Email

I love reading email on devices that aren’t laptops – it makes it feel like less work.  I’m using the default email client on here and, while not exactly what I’m used to, it works fairly well and I only have a single gripe with it so far – I can’t find a way to get it to accept self-signed SSL certificates in order to add my aetherspoon.com email address via a secure IMAP session. There is no way on the Touchpad to accept a self-signed SSL certificate – and, since my mail is hosted by my webhost and not by myself, I don’t have easy access to the Certificate Authority to try and cram the CACert into my Touchpad to make it recognize it.

If that above paragraph made no sense to you, I’ll leave it at “it works great for reading gmail”.

Maps

The Touchpad uses … Bing Maps.  Mind you, the default search engine is still Google, it just uses Bing for maps.  My theory as to why has to involve lots of pieces of paper coming from Microsoft.  Just as well, I actually prefer Bing Maps to GoogMaps for my place of work/residence.  The application works great and so does the GPS – a welcome change from the FAILPS on my phone.

Music, Photos, and Video

I haven’t tried Video yet, so I’ll hold off on commenting too much.  It is supposed to play 1080p video from MP4s, so very similar to practically every other device.  I know many Youtube 1080p videos play just fine (in fact, switching to 720p made it stutter more), so the hardware is probably fine.

The Audio quality out the headphone jack is easily the best I’ve heard in a portable device outside of my high end dedicated MP3 player.  It beats the pants off of my phone and laptop, so major kudos.  The built in speakers aren’t bad for built in speakers either, being better than what is in my laptop (worse than my convertible tablet though) and probably better sounding than the headphone jack on my phone.  On the minus side though, the application is, shall we say, a tad hungry on resources – and by a tad hungry, I mean it responds worse than playing a full screen 1080p Youtube video.  This too was fixed via me violating that warranty.

Pictures, eh.  The camera quality is pathetic cell phone quality, but that’s exactly what I was expecting.  Haven’t tried using it for Skype / GoogChat yet, so it might be better for video.

Other Built In Apps

Calculator

The calculator program is the most pathetic calculator program I’ve seen on a mobile device.  Seriously, my “featurephone” prior to my current smartphone had a better calculator.  It isn’t even full screen!

Clock

It displays a clock and lets you set basic alarms.  Actually, this wouldn’t make a bad ridiculously expensive alarm clock…

Calendar

I think this might be the best application on the Touchpad.  It looks nice, it feels nice, and after violating the warranty it works awesome.  Makes sense – if this is an OS meant for a PDA, then PDA-like built-in applications (email, calendar, contacts, todo lists, clocks) would be the best on it.

Contacts

Works well for me, although I’m not sure why I’d use it.  Syncs with my Goog account, which is good.  *shrug*

Facebook

Definitely pretty, definitely usable…  if it weren’t for the lack of FBPurity, I’d rule this to be the best UI for Facebook ever.

Having said that, however, it means that touch.facebook.com is still a much better site (no apps) and FBPurity is a must for even attempting to use Facebook.  I really hope Goog+ never approaches the level of crap that FB has on it for apps.  :P

Keyboard

Any Slate-based tablet is going to need an onscreen keyboard, by virtue of the fact that, as a slate-based tablet, it doesn’t have a physical one.  WebOS’s onscreen keyboard is…  not bad.  Not bad at all.  It isn’t the best I’ve used (I’m spoiled by my haptic feedback on my phone so I know when I’ve pressed a key rather than having to look), but it is definitely above average.  There are four sizes of keyboard, all four of which have the same general keys on it but with smaller height buttons.  The keyboard has five rows (numbers, three rows of qwerty-style letters, and space) and an alternate symbols keyboard.  It works.

Downloadable Apps

So, one of the big advantages of mobile devices in the 2010s is supposed to be the App Store craze, where you can download apps from a single “trusted” (HA!) source for your mobile device.  The Touchpad is no exception with its “HP App Catalog”.  It has many apps that can do all sorts of useless things…  I should know, I scrolled through them all.

All of them.  There aren’t that many – most are meant for the Palm Pre or other cellular devices.  The ones that are meant for the Touchpad are actually okayish, but they’re so few and far between that they might as well not exist outside of Angry Birds HD (which works perfectly fine, FYI).  I mean, I wasn’t expecting a ginormous app store or anything, but I was kind of expecting…  more.  You know, like a Google Reader app, or really any RSS feed reader app whatsoever for free beyond Mosaic.  I’ve already mentioned the lack of alternative web browser, but there is basically no alternative anything to the built-in applications.

I don’t like that.  I use an alternative PDF viewer on my phone, I have an alternative browser or two installed on my phone, I use an alternative clock, alternative widgets, and so on.  Hell, my laptops and desktops are the same – I don’t even use the standard shell in Windows.  I like having choice – it is one of the reasons why I won’t buy most Apple products.

Oh, and those programs meant for Palm Pres and the like?  Yeah, they run in a phone emulator on the Touchpad, meaning your 9.7″ tablet device opens up a picture of a 3.8″ phone and runs the app inside of that.  Come on, even Apple did a better job with that one.

If you don’t like your Touchpad so much, why don’t you fix it?

I don’t mind if I do, actually.  :)

You see, there is a not-so-secret fact about the Touchpad – it is actually pretty friendly toward modification.  Hell, to do the equivalent of rooting a Touchpad, it requires you to open up your Device Info, go to Custom Programs, and then enter in the Konami code.  Bam, root-equivalent access.

After that, I installed Preware, replaced the Linux kernel on the Touchpad, threw on a butt-ton of patches, rebooted fifty bajillion times, reset the clock speeds on the Touchpad, mumboed my jumbo, bam balamed, and wound up with an almost useful device!

Summary of changes:
- Changed maximum clock speed from 1.2 GHz to 1.5GHz, allowing it to actually function properly.
- Eliminated practically all non-critical logging, speeding up the UI.
- Installed Adblocking features to make the web browser not-suck.
- Changed the minimum brightness from 10% to 1%, saving on battery life.
- Installed Preware, an indy app store for the apps that I actually wanted.

Or, in short, made it not suck.  Prior to the unsucking, I felt like I had paid 150 bucks for an over-glorified Rolodex.  It was useful for keeping organizational notes of things… and not much else.  I can use my phone for that and probably be more effective – I have a nice phone, after all.  100 USD might not have been a bad price for such a device, but 150 USD was a bit overpriced.  Now that I’ve completed most of the unsucking though?  I have a decent little device for 150 USD.  I wouldn’t have paid more than 200 USD for it… but I didn’t.

In the near future, Android will be ported to this device.  It won’t be the best experience for Android (the Tablet versions aren’t open sourced, so it is kind of hard to port them), but it might be better than what WebOS is doing for me now.  Still, not too shabby.  Worse than an iPad, but less than half the price.  Maybe in a month or so I can use this for GMing at least, but right now this works as… an alternative web browsing device and oversized PDA.

Now if only I could get my cats to stop walking on top of it – they keep clicking tapping on things.  :)

Pictures in a forthcoming post, as my living room lighting is The Suck for taking pictures.

This first part (yeah, I keep starting too many series of posts, but otherwise you’ll all lynch me for “tl;dr”ing everything) will go over the crunchy bits – how the class/class archetypes compare to each other on balance/usefulness terms, things like that.

Classes

I’m ignoring the gunslinger, mostly because none of my GMs would let me play as one.  I could make comparisons to a fighter archer, but honestly it isn’t worth it.  It boils down to “if you like the style and are allowed to play one, play the Gunslinger; if you don’t like the style and/or aren’t allowed to play as one, stick with a fighter or ranger.”

Ninja

Weapon Proficiency – +Kama, katana, kusarigama, nunchaku, sai, shuriken, siangham, wakizashi; -sap, hand crossbow, rapier
All right, I have a really dumb question.  Why is the Ninja weapon proficiency list so much better than the Rogues?  I mean, unless if you wanted to use the lowly sap, you’re far, far, FAR better off with the Ninja skill list.  The Wakizashi, in Pathfinder, is a strictly-better Rapier, for instance.  Shuriken aren’t quite strictly-better than the Hand Crossbow, but they’re more useful in more situations.  On top of that, you have a bunch of monk weaponry plus a double weapon – hell, the only double weapon Rogues get is the lowly Quarterstaff!  Not that double weapons are super awesome or anything, they’re just not very common.  Edge for the Ninja.

Skills – +Knowledge: Nobility, -Knowledge: Dungeoneering
Honestly, I think K:Nobility might actually come up more often – and by more often, I mean maybe three times in a campaign vs. twice.  Seriously, by crunching standards, these two skills are generally not worth throwing more than a handful of points in at most.  Edge for no one.

Level 1 – +Poison Use, -Trapfinding
Or, in short, the flavor.  Ninja are supposed to be assassins, Rogues are supposed to be deft with traps.  Really, which one of these becomes more useful depends on the GM and style of campaign – I mean, Poison Use is more obviously useful (assuming you don’t have a GM that believes that any use of poison is an evil act – thanks Book of Exalted Deeds!) in combat, but you might be on a campaign where those bits of extra stat damage… don’t do much because you’re primarily fighting swarms of things rather than individual creatures.  On the flip side, trap disarming is something you can do even without the skill..  as long as they aren’t magical.  Also, trap disarming is only useful in a game where you’re going to encounter traps; some GMs don’t like traps or only use them when there is a rogue in the party.  Slight edge for Ninja.

Level 2 – +Ki pool, -Evasion
Evasion is one of those classic Rogue abilities – in comes a fireball and the sneaky thief is safe!  Giving up evasion, even if it is only for eight levels (you can pick it up as a Master Trick if you want it), is a pretty powerful thing.  Ninja, however, gain the ability to use a Ki Pool.  Even without taking a single ability that uses it, Ki Pools are ridiculously powerful – for instance, you can use a single Ki point for having an extra attack on a full attack per round (similar to Haste).  You get a bonus equal to half your level + charisma modifier per day for Ki points.  This is very powerful and obviously greater than that of Evasion.  Edge for the Ninja.
Note:  I didn’t include the Rogue Talent vs. Ninja Trick thing.  Why?  They can each be used to gain the other’s abilities; in fact, the only real difference is due to you having Ki points as a Ninja and not (normally) as a Rogue.  They’re identical.

Level 3 – +No trace, -Trap Sense
I’m not a fan of trap sense.  Sure, it fits in with the style of Rogue and you can use a rogue to Fighter Trap Disarm (read: trigger all of the traps by just running at them), but it just doesn’t match my style.  Any rogue worth their salt will disarm most of the traps in front of them, especially if they have the rogue trick that lets them passively detect traps.  On the other hand, having +lv/3 to opposed Stealth, Disguise, and the DC for tracking the Ninja is a pretty nice bonus.  Edge for the Ninja.

Level 6 – +Light Steps
A cool ability that isn’t directly combat useful.  Obvious edge for the Ninja, just because the Ninja loses nothing compare to the Rogue.

Level 10 – +Master Tricks, -Advanced Talents
Unlike the Ninja Tricks / Rogue Talents comparison, these are not interchangeable – which is good, since otherwise the Ninja would be way too powerful.  Of the Master Tricks, Assassinate, Ghost Step, Invisible Blade, and Master Disguise are the only useful ones, and even Ghost Step and Invisible Blade are only situationally useful (they both replicate spells that the Ninja could have using UMD and a wand…  which, given that Charisma is the secondary stat for a Ninja, they damn well better use UMD…).  Advanced Talents, by comparison, are far more numerous and useful.  Edge for the Rogue, finally.

Level 20 – +Hidden Master, -Master Strike
For capstone abilities, neither are all that great to be honest.  Master Strike is basically the Rogue’s version of the Assassinate Master Trick, only more versatile.  Master Strike is something along the same lines as Invisible Blade, only for Superior Invisibility.  At least that one is a level 8 spell but better (this one works vs. True Seeing).  Slight edge for the Ninja.

Conclusion:  Ninjas are better than Rogues in 99% of situations.  The only, ONLY situation where Ninja aren’t better than Rogues is when you’re going into a trap-based game.  So, in short, if your GM likes traps and/or other things with near-perpetual reflex-for-half style of attacks, go with a Rogue.  If your GM allows the Ninja and doesn’t fall under the above category, go for the Ninja.  Now, I’m not saying the Ninja is overpowered; the Rogue is certainly not the most powerful class in Pathfinder (nor is it the weakest), I’m just saying that I think it might be strictly better than the default Rogue mechanically.  To give you an idea of how important this is to me, my next character… is a Rogue.

Samurai

Now, I’m going to admit a bit of bias here – I don’t like the Cavalier.  It is almost completely for style reasons; I don’t really enjoy playing mounted characters, for some reason, mostly because the games I’m in end up either indoors or in cities.

Level 1 – +Resolve, -Tactician
Resolve is an interesting ability for low levels.  To my knowledge, it is probably the only way to remove status effects on yourself at level one, plus allowing you to re-roll will/fort saves, plus allowing you to auto-stabilize.  Definitely a useful ability.  On the other hand, Tactician allows you to gain a teamwork feat and then grant that feat to people in a 30′ AoE around you.  Could be potentially awesome, probably wouldn’t be.  Edge to the Samurai.

Level 3 - +Weapon Expertise, -Cavalier’s Charge
Definitely two different styles.  Cavalier’s Charge lets you negate any penalties for charging and get an extra bonus – all around awesome, generally worth around a feat and a half (Weapon Specialization for a particular combat style plus negating a penalty).  Weapon Expertise is also pretty awesome, giving you the ability to take Weapon Specialization (and anything else fighter feat wise) with certain weapons and giving you Quick Draw for free, plus a bonus to confirmations on critical attack rolls.  While Weapon Expertise is always helpful (in combat), Cavalier’s Charge is definitely more powerful – when you’re not trapped in a tiny area.  Having said that, I’m still giving the slight edge to the Cavalier.

Level 4 – +Mounted Archer, -Expert Trainer
Both of these abilities…  kind of suck.  The expert trainer gives you a bonus to teaching tricks, but honestly the DCs aren’t that high to begin with.  On the other hand, it lets you teach tricks to other player’s mounts, making an all-mounted-character campaign substantially more awesome.  Mounted Archer, on the other hand, allows you to fire arrows while mounted easier.  If you don’t use a bow, tough cookies, this ability is worthless.  Slight edge to the Cavalier.

Level 9 – +Greater Resolve, -Greater Tactician
Greater Resolve negates Criticals with a use of resolve.  Greater Tactician gives you another teamwork feat and makes it faster to give allies the bonus on it.  This time, I think the Edge goes to the Cavalier, as making your tactical maneuvers into a swift action means that the Cavalier can also benefit from what is being given out; even if your allies are idiots that can’t use tactics to save their lives, you can.

Level 11 – +Honorable Stand, -Mighty Charge
Honorable Stand allows you to be immune to fear-style effects and makes your Resolve a bit more awesome.  On the other hand, Mighty Charge grants you Improved Critical when charging and the ability to have a free combat maneuver attempt whenever you charge.  Yeah, no brainer, Edge to the Cavalier.

Level 17 – +True Resolve, -Master Tactician
Master Tactician adds more of the same – basically, two tactical feats instead of one.  On the other hand, True Resolve allows you to NOT DIE.  Huge edge to the Samurai, as this is the only “I’m not dead yet” style of ability I’ve ever seen a fighter-like.  Combined with the “I’m really conscious” ability from earlier Resolve, you end up with “Grinning Fearlessly” from Breath of Fire, and that’s just plain awesome.

Level 20 – +Last Stand, -Supreme Charge
Last Stand reminds me of an old FFRPG ability called “Fighter Challenge”, where a fighter had the ability to challenge a single character to a one-on-one duel.  In FFRPG, this was implemented terribly as there was no logical reason why a mage, for instance, would ever accept such a thing – which, since they had no choice and had to use melee weapons, meant that Fighters could simply take out mages.  This was not well thought out.  The Pathfinder version is more like how I’d prefer to see such a thing; you become really strong against weapon attacks from anyone and you become really strong vs. attacks outside of your target.  Or, in short, you’re challenging them because you are strong rather than because they are strong.  It is a logical thing, and this at least feels like a Capstone class ability.  Supreme Charge, on the other hand, is the feat Spirited Charge plus a critical focus feat.  If you don’t have Spirited Charge as a Cavalier by this point, I’m going to wonder what in the world you’re doing.  It doesn’t say if it stacks or not though – if it does, then this is actually an Edge for no one.  Otherwise, Edge for the Samurai.

Conclusion:  If you are playing a Cavalier, you better be short.  Wait, what?  Basically, if you can’t use your charging-on-a-steed abilities, you’re practically worthless as a Cavalier compared to a Samurai.  On the other hand, if you are short, your mount is medium sized and thus can actually fit indoors and inside dungeons.  You can ride your mount anywhere most of your party can go.  If you are not short, you should probably play a Samurai.  It isn’t strictly better, or even generally better; it really depends on how often you think you can charge.  In my experience though?  Indoors battles happen frequently, and you’re not charging much of anywhere if you have a horse.

For an example, Let’s Play Might and Magic VII SPOON!ed might include a regular runthrough of MM7…  with a party of Goblin Druids.  Things like that.

So, first thing to decide is which game.  While mostly #asr people will be answering this, I thought I’d post it on my blog so that other people could chime in – like all three of my readers.  The point of this is to choose a game that I’ll “Let’s Play”; in a later blog post, we’ll decide how it will be SPOON!ed (applying some type of crazy-but-not-necessarily-difficult criteria to the game).

If I’m going to do this, I’m not going to spend a huge amount of time in the game doing a bunch of optional things.  Mostly because I don’t want to divide this up into fifty bajillion segments.  :P

Games to choose from, in no particular order:

1. Shining Force 2 – Strategy RPG – Appx. 15 hours.
2. Faxanadu – Action RPG – Appx. 10 hours.
3. Master of Magic – Turn-based Strategy – Appx. 8 hours.
4. Might and Magic VI – Action RPG – Appx. 20 hours.
5. Might and Magic VII – Action RPG – Appx. 20 hours.
6. Might and Magic VIII – Action RPG – Appx. 15 hours.
7. Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri – Turn-based Strategy – Appx. 8 hours.
8. Beyond the Beyond – Console RPG – Appx. 30 20 hours.
9. Final Fantasy Tactics – Strategy RPG – Appx. 30 hours. (decided it was too long)
10. Vandal Hearts – Strategy RPG – Appx. 15 hours.

So, what I want you (no, not you, you) to do is tell me which of those games you would like me to play.

I fully intend to finish this, mind you, but I usually end up just stopping and never resuming.

Beat it.

Anyway, back to the review.  I’m a Wild ARMs Fanboy, basically.  Well, of the games that I’ve played until now.  I love the setting, WA1 was the first ‘standard console RPG’ I had played (mostly due to the fact that I rarely played RPGs until then, and the ones I did play were StratRPGs).  I’m going to start throwing reviews of games up here; I should probably include pictures, but I’m lazy.  Maybe if people actually started reading this.  :)

Wild ARMs XF is a story about Clarissa Arwin, a woman journeying from another land to the country of Elesius in pursuit of her mother’s sword, being held by a villain by the name of Rupert.  The story begins in medias res and eventually balloons into a full blown civil war and story about ecological devastation.  If that last part sounds odd, you’ve never played a Wild ARMs game before.  Filgaia, the planet every Wild ARMs game takes place in, has got to be the most unfortunate planet in the history of gaming (TVTropes claims it is actually the unluckiest in all of fiction even…).

Story-wise, initially, this felt like a separate strategy game that had elements of Wild ARMs crammed in, kind of like FFT felt compared to the rest of the mainline Final Fantasy games.  That notion is quickly turned around in the half-way point of the game, where the references to the other games in the Wild ARMs series starts being poured on, to the point where I can generally pinpoint when in the chronology of Wild ARMs this game takes place (between Wild ARMs 1 and 2, if anyone is curious; the only references of WA3 in this game tend to come from things in WA3 mentioned as happening ‘again’ – meaning this could be the first point where it happens) and be generally happy with the story.

Problem is, this game is flawed.  I’m not being picky – I mean, come on, I love Beyond the Beyond of all things – but there are a bunch of glaring issues that should have been corrected.

Story – Great (on a scale of “suck” to “jaw-dropping”)

The musical quality of WA is, as usual, awesome.  A nice long and detailed score of tracks in the game, although sadly not composed by Michiko Naruke (composer for WA1-3 + random tracks in 4-5), who is my favorite Japanese game composer.  My only complaint is that the random battle music is always the same – for a Strategy RPG that you need to grind in, this quickly gets annoying.  Still, minor complaint.  Given that I’m listening to the soundtrack while writing up the review, that’s typically a good sign.

Many of the cut scenes are fully voiced.  The English voices are, well, what you’d expect from a non-AAA title being localized from Japan – stick with the Japanese voices, for your own sanity.  Those are perfectly fine.

Audio – Awesome

Graphics quality, well…  this is a PSP game.  I’m playing it on a 42″ 1080p TV.  It is going to look pixelated.  It is a sprite-based 2D game that I’m playing years after it was released, so I’m not expecting Crysis 2 or anything, but the graphics do its job and do it well.  The picture-style of cutscenes work well for a PSP game; if this was released for a console though, I probably would have dropped some points for that.

Graphics – Good

Now onto the part that matters for a strategy RPG – the battles.  The core behind the system is a strong one; it is very similar to that of FFT or really any other class changing system – you have a primary class and abilities assigned to you from other classes.  You have a number of slots based on level and can assign things as you see fit, with some bonus for having your primary class be mastered based on the class.  A few problems though:

1. Some abilities require a particular type of weapon.  One of the things I enjoyed in FFT was the combination of abilities obviously meant for melee weapons to be thrown onto ranged ones – the gun sniper with knight abilities comes to mind.  You can’t do this in WAXF, which greatly limits what you can do with ranged weapons or two handed weapons.
2. You know that annoying mechanic in FFT where, in order to use items, you needed to level up a class and even then you’d only be able to use items immediately next to you?  Yeah, WAXF somehow made it worse.  Sure, you can use most items without doing that, but only on yourself.  In order to use advanced items though (which are over half the items in the game)?  You have to be in the Gadgeteer class and have it mastered.  It makes such items worthless except for in a single battle.
3. Unique characters are strictly better than generics, unless if you’re trying some oddball strategy like I tend to do.  Each of the uniques have their own personal class on top of all of the regular ones, and the bonus for being in that class is three additional skill slots.  These three skill slots are far better than the bonuses for any of the regular classes, so there is no reason to have your characters be anything else unless if they want to level up in another class.
4. Not enough characters in combat and/or too many uniques.  I’ve touched on this in a previous blog post.
5. You never need to actually use any of these strategies in the game, mostly because of how pathetically easy the main plot is and how much easier the random battles are.  Seriously, I stopped getting damaged except merely as a means to save (real) time around halfway through the fourth chapter.  The only thing that was challenging was the secret hidden boss that is in every WA game, and that was only because it cheated, and the start of Chapter 3 because I had neglected to upgrade equipment four times.  I’m serious.

It bothers me greatly to see a game that is shipping up to be awesome be plagued with these…  minor issues.  They’re not minor to me, they’re just minor to fix.  Make random battles harder (even just leveling up the enemies to be your level would have helped!), add in more character slots per battle, make them more difficult toward the end where you actually need to use these strategies – ANYTHING!  You had such promise WAXF, but then you failed me.

Battle System – Poor

Don’t get me wrong – I still like the game.  It showed such promise, the story was engaging, the musical quality was superb..  but at the end of the day, strategy RPGs are judged primarily based on..  you know.. strategy.  You don’t need strategy once you get past half-way through the game, and this is a travesty.  I shouldn’t be rewarded for using a single character to kill everything in sight every plot battle because it is easier, just as I shouldn’t be penalized for wanting to try out new things.  Why do you make me sad WAXF?  You could have been AWESOME.  Fix the battle system to not have those stupid ideas, put in some kind of random battle mode where you can actually fight challenging fights, and you could have made yourself the next FFT in my mind.  There is a NewGame+ mode in the game… but why would I bother?  There isn’t a reason to use alternative party configurations because I’m being gimped by using generics, and I’ve already beaten the big nasty hidden boss.  There is nothing left for me in this game save the ending to see the plot finish.

Oddly enough, this means that my problems with the game are exactly the opposite of the review up on RPGamer for the game.  He commented about the storyline being fine until the midpoint of the game, where scifi elements appeared ‘out of nowhere’ – which is explained by the fact that I don’t see a review up for any other Wild ARMs game by him.  That’s a staple of the WA series, Adriaan, it is to satisfy their base of gamers – like me.

Overall Rating:  Decent to Good
Difficulty:  Very Easy
Length:  Long (60-70 Hours)

Reference on difficulty:
I play a lot of Strategy RPGs, so my definition of “Very Easy” is probably different from someone who has problems with them.  For instance, I haven’t encountered a StratRPG I’d classify as “Very Hard”.  I’m also not including me breaking the system to the point of it crying in a corner – I can do that with just about anything.  Now, if the system naturally breaks without me trying, yeah, that’s going to be labeled as easy.  Thus, I’m putting in this handy reference in:

From hardest to easiest (and only of mostly beaten games):

All non-GC/Wii Fire Emblem games > Front Mission 3 = Ultima 4 > Final Fantasy Tactics > Shining Force 2 > Phantom Brave = Disgaea > Shining Force 1 = Wild ARMs XF = Vandal Hearts > Eternal Eyes

I’m just finishing up a run through of Wild ARMs XF (yeah, I know, it came out over three years ago, but I’m slow in getting through my backlog) and, once more, I find all sorts of issues with the game that could have been fixed with a small amount of effort. Just a little more and it could have been an awesome game. It just committed too many Cardinal Sins.

One day, I’d like to make my own StratRPG. I’ve had tons of ideas in mind for several years now (since before I went to college even!), but I know I have little coding ‘skillz’ in order to make such a thing (really, the graphics are the problem; I suck at coding GUIs) and definitely do not have the artistic skills. Similar to the previous post on strategy gaming, that means criticizing someone else’s work and claiming that I can do better.

Commandment #1:  Thou Shalt Not Restrict Choice

Noted Offenders: Wild ARMs XF (PSP)
Noted Saints: Final Fantasy Tactics (PS1/PSP)

One of the things I like the most about StratRPGs is the ability to do whatever I want to do with respect to strategy. I mean, it is a Strategy RPG, I kind of expect some form of Strategy. By far, one of the things that pisses me off the most is when a game restricts the choices I can make.

Now, I’m not talking about the beginning of the game. Want me to go through a tutorial where all I have available are people that can chuck rocks at other people? I’m fine with that. Want a class-based system where not all of the classes are available initially? OK.

Give me levels where I HAVE to do it a particular way, and not as an introduction to a new concept? Now you’re pissing me off. WAXF greatly enjoyed doing this toward the beginning of the game, and I tolerated it. It was usually one battle per new class and figuring out their shtick. However, they decided to throw more at the end. I’m at the end of the game, and BAM, Zombie rush. One class’s abilities are so much more awesome against undead that you would be a fool to use anything else; in fact, if you do use anything else, they have a decently large chance to automatically revive themselves. Pretty much any character not using that class’s abilities is worthless or, at best, better be throwing the people with those class abilities at the bad guys (literally).

Not cool WAXF, not cool. This also applies to classless StratRPGs, where one character is pretty much required to do something to the exclusion of others.

On the flip side, you have games like Final Fantasy Tactics. Sure, there are battlefields where one class’s abilities give a bit of an advantage, but there is never a battle where one class is obviously required to do anything significant* in it and you can often find ways of fiddling with things to make oddball strategies work out. This encourages creativity and allows for good replayability.

* – I’m not talking about how some classes are far more awesome than others.

Commandment #2: Thou Shalt Not Diss the Generics

Noted Offenders: Wild ARMs XF (PSP), Final Fantasy Tactics (PS1/PSP)
Noted Saints: Phantom Brave (PS2/Wii/DS)

There are two distinct styles of StratRPGs, from what I’ve seen. You either have a group of characters, none of which are truly generic (they have story-related events, however minor, based on the character), or you have a small group of “Uniques” and the ability to gain generic characters.

Sadly, nearly all of the cases of the latter that I’ve played just so happen to have an equal number of Uniques as slots in a battle (or worse, more Uniques than slots), and the Uniques are just special enough / more powerful enough where you’d be a fool for using generics.

If that is the case, why even bother having them?

Take Wild ARMs XF, for instance. In the game, you only ever get six slots for characters. Coincidentally, there are six unique characters in the game, all of whom have an ability on their unique class that is far superior to anyone else that lets them equip more abilities. They can do everything a generic unit can, only better (but potentially with worse stats). FFT has this problem, only worse since there are more than five Uniques in the game. The middle of the game becomes, ‘which Unique characters do I want to use for the rest of the game?’ rather than ‘how can I balance my party appropriately?’

On the flip side of the coin, you have games like Phantom Brave. There are a very small number of unique characters (2). Sure, you have to use one of them and you’re likely to use the other, but you can bring multiple generics along with you in every battle. This allows a player to expand in scope beyond the abilities of the pre-created characters in the game – which is the whole point behind having generics to begin with.

Commandment #3: Thou Shalt Finish Thine Plot/Game Before Release

Noted Offenders: Eternal Eyes (PS1), Wild ARMs XF (PSP)
Noted Saints: Disgaea (PS2/PSP/DS)

Now, allow me to make a note: this is spoiler free. Mostly because, due to the absence of plot, it is impossible to spoil these games in the way I describe them.

Eternal Eyes is the great and unholy violator of this principle, to the point where I’m still wondering why the hell I bothered finishing that game. It starts with a plot (not much of one, but eh). It ends with a plot (a bad one). There is practically nothing in between, however. Hell, at one point, they stop even explaining why you are bothering to go from point A to point B! It is just the only option available to you with no in-game justification.

WAXF didn’t look like it would suffer from this, until I hit the long-battle-streak-of-DOOM! toward the end of the 4th chapter.  Without spoiling anything, you end up on a particularly desolate battlefield – six times almost in a row (with two battles in the middle to break things up).  The same exact battlefield, starting in generally the same spots (the battles to break things up are on the same map).  Hell, two of the battles even had the same enemies, with little plot justification as to why they’re doing the same thing twice!  This is obviously something that was just not finished in time for release; I doubt any game designer would ever intentionally do that.  It is kind of like watching someone paint themselves in a corner, run out of time, and just decide to throw everything out and make the player suffer through their crap.  Hell, up until this point in WAXF, I was tempted to rate it one of the best StratRPGs I’ve played – this battle series was responsible for the first commandment being broken as well.

Disgaea, on the other hand…  well, I’m not going to say it had a great plot.  I’m not talking about the quality of plot – a lot of good StratRPGs basically had excuse plots, and I’m fine with that.  There is a pretty large difference between an excuse plot and no plot at all though.  Disgaea, through any required battle, maintained its plot and/or sideplots to the end.  They at least finished the game.  Push your game back a few weeks – unless if you’re going up against some behemoth of an RPG being released at the same time (DQ/FF), it won’t make that big of a difference.

Commandment #4: Thou Shalt Not Make One Obvious Overpowered Ability or Character

Noted Offenders: Phantom Brave (PS2/Wii/DS), Shining Force 2 (Gen/Wii/PC), Final Fantasy Tactics (PS1/PSP), Vandal Hearts (PS1), Disgaea (PS2/PSP/DS), Wild ARMs XF (PSP)… really, it’d be quicker to mention StratRPGs that don’t offend this.
Noted Saints: Fire Emblem Series (NES/SNES/GBA/GC/Wii)

I’m not talking about broken combinations figured out after fiddling with the system; every game has something like that.  Those are fine – it takes time to figure it out and implement your Strategy.  This is a Strategy RPG; they are meant to be broken, and that’s most of the fun of them for me.  My combinations of fast WAXF Grapplers to throw my slower characters at the hard to reach enemies up high to nuke faster is perfectly fine, as at least I had to think of that strategy rather than just having it blink at me.

I’m talking about when it is ridiculously obvious to anyone who has ever played a Strategy RPG.  Allow me to state some examples:

• Phantom Brave:  Speed Stat Attacks / Bottle Mail / Speed Boosting Items.  Any game that uses absolute speed stats for initiative should watch out for this; basically, anything that has a high speed stat goes more frequent.  Bottle Mail, the jokeish character type that allows you to take items from the battlefield, has a very high speed stat.  You can give them abilities that do damage based on speed stats, making them ludicrously dangerous.  You can also equip strange things on characters, like trees, that give huge penalties to stats like HP but bonuses to stats like Speed.  Result?  They slaughter everything everywhere always without any risk to themselves and using anything else isn’t worth your time in doing by comparison.  This doesn’t really count as a combo, given that any ONE of these abilities are overpowered…
• Shining Force 2:  Peter.  It practically counts as a challenge run to not use Peter because of how ridiculously overpowered he is, to the point where my primary challenge when he is in the party is to not let him become ridiculously overleveled.  Mind you, this is a required character for a decent chunk of the game.
• Disgaea:  Laharl.  You know, the main character that you kinda have to use.  His abilities are utterly ridiculous and overshadow practically the rest of the cast.  The saving grace, in this case, is that this was intentional.  Convinced by someone that this is not an example.
• Final Fantasy Tactics:  Thunder God Cid.  Sure, lets give the powers of four or five separate unique classes to the same character, plus give him higher than normal unique character stats and one of the best weapons in the game – I’m sure players will find that balanced!
• Wild ARMs XF:  Intrude.  It is a high MP cost ability that allows you to immediately take two more turns (and yes, you can Intrude again if you wish, until you have the next eight turns).  It doesn’t matter if you know little else that goes on in WAXF, most StratRPG players can immediately tell that it is incredibly broken.
• Wild ARMS XF (again):  Accelerate.  It is a non-action skill that gives you extra init points, basically.  Every round.  A random amount, from 1 to 100, where 100 means you go next.  Again, this by itself is so powerful that not using it would be foolish (see my comments about absolute speed for initiative from Phantom Brave); combined with Intrude, it means you get 2-3 actions for each action spent…
• Vandal Hearts:  Hawknights.  It is the alternate promotion from Archer, tied for the most common player class in the game.  You lose your ranged attack but gain a really high movement rate, much higher attack, higher defense, become strong versus the most common enemy class in the game (instead of being weak against it) and weak against the least common enemy class in the game.  You can one-shot almost everything you are strong against and most of other things as well.  The sad part?  The second strongest class in the game is what you promoted away from.  Archer-path is way too overpowered.

I could go on, but I hit tl;dr around a thousand words ago.  All of these things have consequences – namely, making a party without using these things becomes sort-of a challenge (fun in its own right, but shouldn’t be required for having fun in the game) and also means you shouldn’t use things that the concept itself is perfectly fine.  I love the concept of Hawknights; if they were nerfed a bit more, I’d have tons of fun coming up with unique strategies for them.

Anything so powerful that someone could, relatively easily, solo the game with it is something that shouldn’t happen.  It means there is less fun due to a restriction of choice (that first commandment, above), since there are obvious advantages with going one particular path over another.

I think the only game series that I’ve seen do this right is the Fire Emblem series, only because practically every character is genericish.  There aren’t overpowering abilities simply by virtue of the fact that there aren’t that many varied abilities.

These are the four major sins of the Strategy RPG.  I’ll probably make another post with more later, but who knows when.  I’ve already greatly exceeded the number of posts that I thought I’d make on this blog, maybe someday someone will even read it without me linking to it.  :P