Posted on: October 3, 2023
Early Access review
lacktheknack
Verified ownerGames: 659 Reviews: 14
Decent Idea, Decent Execution
A throwback to the old dungeon crawlers, most comparable to "Legend of Grimrock" these days, It's a good execution of the ideas - I wasn't a fan of Grimrock's "wandering preset encounters" idea, and Ludus Mortis' "movement attracts attention" encounter variant is much better in my opinion. Unlike Grimrock, Mortis is grindable - a big boon, considering how XP-intensive the game is. You can commit to a preferred party of four, or you can grind older dungeons and fill out your ludus with about fifteen different classes of fighter. The game starts slow with your party missing half their attacks and getting offed pretty easily, but as you level up, the game opens up with more interesting dungeons and cooler equipment and useful abilities that massively increase a fighter's usefulness. Huge fan of the customization, from the many classes down to the frequency of fights (low if you want to grind item chests, high if you want to grind XP). Also a fan of the risk/reward weighting (the longer your streak of fights without using the recovery statue, the higher your XP and money multiplier), as well as the tabletop influence (3d4 versus 2d8 damage is a more interesting choice than "4-8' versus "2-12". Artstyle is a bit scrappy, but in a fun way. It really feels like an old dungeon crawler with an HD mod attached, and that's a compliment. "Ancient Rome with Zombie Demons" is a fun setup. The only real heartbreaker is the gllitches. Most of them are navigable with a save-exit-reload (or a forced exit if you're unlucky), but I had two save files rendered permanently broken because stepping on a question-mark event tile at the same time as combat starting breaks the game and then saves it, but it's avoidable, so it doesn't damage the game too heavily for me. With patches, this could rise from a gem in the rough to just a plain old gem of a game.
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