Posted on: December 4, 2022
thaumasiotes
Games: Reviews: 8
Mechanics for their own sake
This is an odd game. It is not procedurally generated - the storylines are the same every time. But the mechanics rely on procedural generation, even though it isn't in the game. So one of your opening quests is to kill a wereboar. Wereboars can be found in a particular location. To kill one, you have to go there. And when you arrive, you roll the dice (2d6) to see what random encounter you get. You meet a wereboar when you roll 9 or above. Otherwise, nothing happens at all. The wereboar is the only potential encounter in that space, but most of the time, you don't find it. Since you need it for your quest, you then walk back to town, and then you walk back to the wereboar area to take another shot at meeting one. And you rolled low again, so you walk back to town, and then you walk back to the wereboar area. This makes absolutely no sense. If the only option I have is to find and fight a wereboar, why make me walk back and forth several times first? Why can't I go to the wereboar area and then track a wereboar down, because I know they live there and I need to find one? There's also a commodities trading aspect of the game. You can easily, though not quickly, generate unlimited money by buying silver in one area and then walking - along a path that contains no random encounters and no threats - to a different area where you can sell it at a higher price. So your funding is purely dependent on how long you're willing to spend clicking buttons while money slowly, slooowly accumulates. Then, when you die, that wipes out the money you were carrying. So you get to do another round of "trading". It's "fun"! This game could have used someone checking to see whether the mechanics worked as a game. There is a game here, but all of the mechanics are working against it, not with it.
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