The most noteworthy feature of this game is the complexity of the artificial intelligence in it. In LTC, you control the leader of a squad of three (+you) fighters, each of which plays a key role in the party.


Pictured here: TEAMWORK
Not pictured here: The mysterious third party member

Let's break down who does what in battle.

Your tank doubles as the striker. Her attacks deal crippling blows and knock back enemies. She specializes in taking minibosses and bashing their skulls into the ground. Her special attack is a whirlwind attack which allows her to knock back every enemy adjacent to her.

Your marksman is the controller. He uses area of effect attacks and debuffs to disable groups of enemies, clearing the battlefield of mooks to let you focus on the real threats.

Your medic keeps you healthy and switches between buffing you and debilitating enemies with single-target debuffs such as poison.

The AI in LTC works by recognizing some common scenarios and delivering suggestions to each of the party members to switch between discrete tactical modes (heal, buff, attack, etc). As an example scenario, imagine that a group of enemies has just spawned. The party will begin "prepping" for the battle by staying back while the medic fully buffs the attackers and the marksman will use a stun grenade to pin the enemies in place so that you're not interrupted while you're preparing. Once preparations are finished, you charge into battle fully buffed and start wrecking faces.

By prioritizing party members and keeping a fine-grained record of who has taken the most damage and at what rate, the medic can determine with superhuman efficiency who is in the most need of healing and heal them appropriately. When the player is in danger of dying, the tank will guard her until her health has stabilized again.

Range plays an important factor, too. Both the medic and the tank are restricted to melee attacks, leaving them vulnerable against ranged enemies. In situations where they're being overrun by ranged enemies, for instance, the tank will guard the medic and escort him back to safety, indicating to the player that you need to take care of the ranged enemies to make it safe for them again.

...The list goes on.

As a result, you have a team which is cognizant of the other members' strengths and weaknesses and responds to situations in order to exploit them. In early scenarios, encounters I had set up with the intention of being cruelly unfair were ripped apart in less than a minute.

Let me put it this way.

Your allies are extremely efficient monster-slaughtering machines.

Tired of RPGs where your AI-controlled party members stupidly run around and waste items or MP? This is the game for you!