I wanted to test the game, but I ended up playing for over 4 hours straight. XD Suffice to say I love it. :D You can play with just the mouse and move on the map talking to people and making choices in dialogue and accepting quests. Combat is turn based with a large selection of abilities your character can use and the skill tree functions by investing enough points into the previous skill to unlock the next one for upgrading bonuses such as getting extra % of gold, EXP and more HP and Focus (you use it for skills, so it's like mana). You also get to spend one ability point per level for comabt buffs and special attacks that use Focous. Only your main weapon's damage is counted for normal attacks, the offhand one is used for combos. Each weapon type has its own skills you can use. Outside of combat and in a friendly town, you can create potions - set it up and let the specified amount of time pass as you do something else, though you can only acess the craft screen in a friendly town, so it's best to pocket a potion before going out. You can create health, fast travel and other potions and red orbs you can use to upgrade existing equipment at a forge. You'll frequently find chests with gold and people to talk to for side quests - say helping a village get rid of a curse that's actually about milk, not their uncureable stupidity. There's a lot of humor like that in some conversations and side quests. If you die, you will respawn at the last friendly location you were in, so testing the waters with opponents and seeing if you are strong enough yet or not is encouraged and you'll only lose a few gold coins if you die. There are achivements for monsters and costmetic options that also strengthen your character. Unfortunately the female character is one in apperence only as the dialogue will address you as male, but that's my only complaint. The game is incredibly fun once you figure out the core mechanics and get a few levels, so I warmly recommend it.
Tried it, but I don't think I'm a good fit for the game. XD Thing is I'm not good with the having to use the middle mouse button to target lock while having to attack with the other mouse buttons and with having to dash a lot I can't find a good spot to remap lockon to. And there's a lot disorientation: in melee mode the camera is quite a bit behind and above the character and I'd like to adjust the camera to be closer, but I can't and when I enter shooting mode it's zoomed in too much and I can hardly see where I'm going and since avoiding enemy attacks in shooting mode is crucial, I'd just be killed easily. What did me in was having to press so many different buttons in quick sucession - while you do get a tutorial for each new gimmick you can use, it's via noral gameplay, unless it's a new magic attack you get at the Altar, so you can easily die - the pace with the tougher enemies is fast and I have to keep track of the fight while constantly thinking of which of the 4 or 5 special buttons I need to press in very quick sucession. And your special attacks only charge up if you attack enemies enough, so I can't rely on hit and run tactics either. I don't know if I can't get the controls remapped so they suit me or is it just too many buttons to think about simultainiously, but I don't feel I can keep up with all this. XD What I did like gameplaywise was the compass mechanic: a red arrow if you're near a treasure chest and a green one for where to go - if I had to manually orienteit with a compass I'd be lost in 3 seconds falt, but this worked well for me by just giving me an indication about what direction to head into. I do like the game's characters and I'm intrigued at the setting and story, but given I can't keep up with the gameplay I'll get a Youtube video for the story instead. While the game is probably meant to be played with a controller, I'd prefer not to mess with one when I have games that feel less overwhelming to play.
Want to play as a dragon? Great. You can pick from 3 dragons - 1 fire: good for raw power, but has few spells initially, 2 ice: many spells and fast, but weak initially, 3 necromancer: good regeneration, can summon pets (most are useless), a stable solid build with initially low flight speed. You can pick new spells as they unlock and/or upgrade you stats for more power to your breath attacks, regeneration, mana inflow, flight speed and more. However, given you'll mostly be flying around and killing mosters, demolishing their lairs and gathering energy from slain foes to build and upgrade towns, the game can get repetative with the same cycle of bash lairs, slay monsters, upgrade town and occasionally complete a special objective or boss. Another issue is the tiny minimap with dots for mosters and their lairs - you will get a spell to detect lairs fairly early, but it might be difficult to make out where the minimap says a lair or monster is if you have poor vision. The good news is that GOG has cloud saves for the game and they fixed some issues that the original release of the game had. I'd reccomend shortish play session to avoid being jaded by the repetition.
While the Order's story is lackluster and only has some monster slaying for spice, the Lizardfolk one is satisfying and rewarding, if a bit harder and I encountered some bugs with them, but nothing game breaking and all the bugs didn't reappear when I restarted the missions in which they occurred. There are signs that a dark elf campaign was in the works, but sadly it didn't make it into the final game - e.g. they appear in King screen - you can play with them in skirmish mode, though. Some gameplay elements are unique and well thought out, such as damage values and resistances for each individual unit. You also don't have worker units, but the town is grid-based instead. You can build building of the same type in the same square to give units higher levels and more trainees to take with them into battle. You have 3 resources: gold you can get in the underworld or by building more buildings in town for taxation (X gold/second), EXP to level up your units that you get by slaying enemies and monsters and dragonshards that randomly fall to the surface world and any unit can gather except flying units. You can pick from 4 champions for each campaign, each of them with their own bonus and abilities. Like champions, different units feel diverse and interesting and each maps has NPCs with dialogue and side quests for you to complete. You are also given reward points for adhering to some limitations, but they're dumb and are better ignored. E.g. finish the map with only X units or finish the map without spending more than Y resources. Technically the game offers replayability with different artifacts you can unlock for different champions, but not a necessity. So it's a lot of classic RTS elements with building armies and such, but there are also RPG elements with each map having side quests and getting past traps in the underworld and looking for gold is an adventure on its own. While the Order of the Flame was a letdown storywise, the Lizardfolk were great.
The more I play it, the more I remember why I don't like it: lots of grinding that doesn't really feel rewarding, but it drags instead; little story and interaction, creepy atmosphere and music (I really hate the limited light and how enemies can sneak up on me, if they are well camouflaged). While I do like playing with The Hell 2 more than the original Diablo, it doesn't really do away with any of the problematic areas of the original game (listed in the paragraph below) and by now I already tried a run with TH2 once before, so there's no novelty to help keep me engaged either. I can see both Diablo's historical value (it basically started a genre from what I understand) and how other people might like it, but it's the wrong combination of rigid gameplay, repetativeness ad infinitum (especially if you want to go for a character with balanced build, (Diablo isn't friendly to a jack of all trades character)) - I'd basically have to reply sections I've seen so many times before to grind and eventually progress a little further, only for the cycle to repeat - and too little story to keep me engaged. Plus canon lore says the town gets wiped out despite the player defeating Diablo in the first game. So there's no sense of accomplishment or helping the residents. As it stands I might play through the entire thing one day just to say I've completed it and probably never give it a second glance. I'd rather play a game I can enjoy - with more story and one I can impact and with less opressive athmosphere and less forced grinding that in Diablo begins to feel pointless the more repetition it forces for a tiny bit of progress - Diablo just feels like a chore after playing for some time. In short: I can see the game's historical value and mods do improve it, but they don't take away the wrong mix of things I dislike about the game itself.
I get to be a dungeon keeper for monster?! O.O How awesome is that! Finally a game with that dynamic. :D Except it's not engaging in any way. D: + I get to manage monster and they look interesting, but that's the only plus. - There's no lore invested into them anywhere. And no story whatsoever. You can just have runs for a score or a custum run where you adjust settings freely. - The training part has good voice acting , but it's dropped in the actual game. Heck at least a narrator would give the game some life blood it desperately needs. - There's no real tutorial and nothing is really explained. - There's a bunch of curancies and I'm still not sure what some of them even do - you get gold when you defeat adventures and blod if you kill them and tears if you scare them. - Events you can select are randomly generated in no real order: adventurers for battles, merchant to get new monsters, alchemist to convert one curreny to another, engineer to upgrade your traps, "Event ?" for meaningless random stuff you just read and accept - some have choices, but it's nothing meanigful; and other minor things. - The battles are so dry and boring: there's just selecting what monster will be placed where and what attack they'll use, you can check the hero's stats before battle, but not abilities. Even the animations are lackluster: monster A does this, hero 1 does this and so on with nothing to be remotely cool or actually entertaiming and that's supposed to be the height of the game. :( - Mostly the monsters will die frequently and lose morale (each as a gurge and they can't be used for a while if it gets to 0) and you have to manage keeping them active or letting them rest in the garrison. - You can upgrade your monsters and boss monster, but you don't get any choice over what can be upgraded and how, there's no skill tree, just randomness you can't impact. Guess I'll have to wait for anohter game to let me manage monsters with an actual story. :(
Why take a perfectly good concept and ruin it with incredibly terrible writing? Cute artwork - check, monsters, but in a positive light - check. What I expected was something like Munster Academy that actually has monster lore and cute character interactions. What I got was something that could function perfectly well with normal high school kids instead of monsters. I went through 4 short playthroughs to see if I could be convinced that there was a single line of the writing that was good. There wasn't. It has the maturity level of a bratty little kid and it literally took some highschool LOLs from the bottom of the barrel. E.g. A car "breeding" and a car "giving birth" (of course the mechanics behind that are not explained), taking artistic pictures of food is more important than eating the food, going to year X B.C. to "exist before it was cool". And all that bizarreness just builds up, but shifts from one absurd line to another with no substance behind it. It has no head nor tail. The writing isn't even a bit funny and the game doesn't even bother to give you any instructions on anything and lacks some core features of a visual novel. What each stat does, how it affects anything, how to even date or romance a particular character - nothing is explained ever. There is no option to save mid-game, nor an option to reread a line either. All the DLC does is add a few new characters, but it does not improve the core game any, it's still the same mess it was originally. Heck if this is a terrible parody at least say it's a terrible parody, so I can avoid it. The only positive thing I can say is that the artwork is cute and that you can set both your character's name and pronoun - likely a nod towards transgender acceptance. If you want a dating game with real substance, actual monster lore, sweet atmosphere and likable characters; get Munster Academy (by Ran) instead. It's a free game on itch.io that's well made and appropriate for all ages.
I really want to like this game ... + cute critters - check + nice graphics - check + good sound - check + unlockable genes with lots of possible combinations - check BUT - animation - NO REAL MOVEMENT (the animals will turn their heads after the mouse, but they have no action animation and they just appear on a different tile if they are moved). - Likely to create expectations that currently can't be met. Only the last 10 seconds of the taser thriller show the ACTUAL gameplay. The rest of the presentation material makes you think the animals will at least move around, but they don't. - too basic * Genes are unlocked by repeating actions, e.g. make 30 swim moves = webbed feet. - Too repetitive Move around, occasionally unlock a gene, get attacked by enemies that seem to just show up almost out of thin air, create cubs, keep them alive. Repeat. - Missing some lifeblood features * If there isn't much to play with at least give me the option to create. An editor of some kind to let me goof around creating different animals just for the sake of envisioning that perfect gene combination or making an incredibly cute (or hideous) critter. * A CLEAR tutorial with all the information to a "t". Point 1: Make it crystal clear where the tutorial REALLY ends. I started with the story mode, got to a point where Adam and Eve have their first cub, then the tutorial SEEMINGLY ends. If there is more to the tutorial tell me so! The way it is now, I was certain the game was telling me to move on to the sandbox mode. Point 2: There aren't enough details in the tutorial. I've read through it, but I still have no clue how to change the animals' fur. If there is a feature tell me it's there and especially how to use it, leaving you to stumble in the dark is the worst thing a tutorial can do. P.S. I've no idea what the developers will do with the game. I sincerely hope they improve it, but ATM (21st December 2018) any meaningful updates seem unlikely.
