I was expecting more based on the reviews. I know it's easy to be a critic but here are my grades: Environment, Presentation, Music, Sound: A Game Mechanics: C+/B- UI: C I find the UI to be lacking. It's a little annoying controlling the game. Icons at the edge of the screen keep me from being able to scroll by moving the pointer to the edge of the screen. There's also no click and drag to rotate, nor are there options to keep the game from automatically moving the camera every time an enemy takes a turn. As for the mechanics: It's possible to save during a mission and the choices you make on the map seem completely random in the distribution of risk and reward, which means success is based on saving and reloading until a player gets their preferred outcome. The map mechanics suck in my opinion. The actual turn-based strategy aspect of the game is pretty good, but not as good as King's Bounty.
I don't get it. If were to spend a bunch of time, money and effort to make a Diablo clone I would try to emulate the better one, Diablo 2. This is a low budget rip-off of Diablo 3. I'll never understand how someone can have the skill to build a game like this but be unaware that their game's mechanics are mediocre or that they are attempting to emulate a mediocre game.
I thoroughly enjoyed this game for my first few run throughs. Great mechanics me thinks and I don't even like card games. However, it doesn't have near the longevity that I hoped it would. There's not enough depth/variation in the gameplay to keep my interest piqued for dozens or hundreds of hours. Definitely worth the half price I bought it for.
I had high hopes for this game with it's ultra high rating. The visual presentation is unique and well done but I found the gameplay to be uninteresting. This game is a lot like Hammerwatch. In both games you run a procedural dungeon over and over again until you gain enough power to advance. I enjoyed Hammerwatch a little more but neither title has equip able drops. For me half the fun of an action RPG is dropping new equipment and experimenting with builds. The skill system in this game seems so dry and uninspired, just strait up + to damage or armor, etc... I'm surprised at the high ratings. Maybe I need to play it more or something but I'm not inspired to.
I know this review is a bit late in the game but I thought I'd put my two cents in. First off, I'm super impressed by this game's soundtrack. I absolutely adore the track with melancholy piano. I also really liked this game's visual approach. The procedural combinations of background, foliage, block types, and weather create scenes that are nice to look at. The lighting adds a lot too. I went back to Terraria and was surprised to realize how much better Starbound looks. Mechanically, for me at least, this game is largely held up by it's interesting choice of weapons. A game without fun drops takes a huge hit in my opinion. I really enjoyed experimenting with the different weapon types. Exploring is the bread and butter of this type of game and I wasn't disappointed. Although, I do agree with the common complaint that exploring downward could have been taken advantage of better. I'm surprised that the developers didn't give players more reasons to explore the innards of each planet. Once you've mined enough minerals there's very little reason to explore downwards. I found it interesting that there were so many planetary systems to explore but so few of them needed to be explored. Why not ramp up the difficulty curve and hide a single ultra rare drop guarded by a mini-boss in the innards of each planet? The bones are here for an even better game for sure. Something makes me think Starbound II will be an incredible game.
The tightwads at Blizzard have obviously decided to make a strenuously calculated move. How can I not take the bait? This game is genesis, the father of the greatest game ever made, the Moses of ARPG's. If only the rights to the game weren't owned by Diablo himself.
I'm still waiting for an ARPG that lives up to Diablo's legacy. Grim Dawn has great bones. It's got great visuals, a nice UI, good control, decent music and sound effects, and fun loot. The final boss is amazingly well done from a visual standpoint. The game's skills are well balanced so you can make an effective character out of many different designs. However, there just isn't enough variation and challenge to keep me coming back for more. I started playing Elite mode at level 57 and it's mind bogglingly easy. It's not a hardcore game. As good as the level design is it's not randomized very much so that you know what to expect every time you come back. There also isn't much randomization in enemy creation. It's very homogenous in it's pace. It's not like Diablo or Diablo 2 where you can be humming along and then run into a pattern of enemies that trip you up. But this is all par for the course in modern ARPG's. They all seem so focused on balance that they become homogenized. I played Diablo 2 for years over and over again and was pleasantly surprised by it's patterns every time. I wish I could find that again. Why can't designers get beyond all this modern homogeneity? Wouldn't it be cool if a single cave opening in Grim Dawn could be 1000 levels deep or 1 and you had no idea how far it would go? And if by some amazing chance it was 1000 levels deep you come out of the cave so powerful that you could mow through several areas in the game before encountering a worthy challenge. Or, if you never happened to find a cave deep enough you might have to suckle your power by repeating those same areas over and over again looking for that orgasmic cave with extremely rare and mind blowing loot at the bottom. Wouldn't it be cool to wonder if you could even complete a cave or have to come back when you're like 50 levels higher because the beasts in inside are so extremely powerful? I wish game designers would focus less on controlling an experience and more on surprising themselves.
This series is my all time favorite. WOTN is a less controlled experience than the original KB or Crossworlds. I don't know if that's because they didn't have the money to fine tune the game or because that's what the designers intended. It's obvious that certain aspects of the game were meant to have more polish, such as the quest system and bugs. You have a lot of choice as to which areas to do first so you'll end up being way overpowered at times, especially if you install the DLC. I liked that though. It was fun to watch my summoned phoenix crush an entire army single handed on impossible difficulty. Which brings up another point. Am I getting better at KB or is Crossworlds just a more challenging game? Not sure. Anyhow, WOTN has more elements in it than other KB games. More spells, more units, more areas to explore (although they reused areas from the original KB). Super fun! Looking forward to Dark Side big time. I hope the developers give the game a big time graphical upgrade at some point.
I really appreciate what the developers did here. This is an amazing game. I enjoyed it deeply.
