I know game is based on tabletop game, but I never played it, I don't know the rules and I'm reviewing it as computer game. Stoyline is.. well medicore. Its a "four randoms save the world" cliche. I like voice acting and general conversations however. Graphics is okay..iish? Environments are good, PCs and monsters are OK. They don't look good in cutscenes. UI is weird, looks like prototype. Game has terrible UX, its so clunky and you must fight interface all the game. Why I give it 5 star then? Because there is one thing game excels at and its the combat. I'm impressed with tactical combat, encounters are nicely and carefully crafted, its not like "you walk in the room with 3 zombies inside". There are a lot of terrain movement, fortifications, etc. Combat itself is a "tale of low numbers" which I really like in games. Basically, damage/hp scaling in game is very low, you won't do milion dps here but it makes game very balanced. I like the idea of managing resources that you can recover on campfires. I wish game would be more balanced around it (more spell/skill usages, but limited campfire use, because in some areas you can abuse campfires to enter every battle with full supply). I think game should have more careful balancing though. While all of my players feel worth in party, I feel there is something off about spellcasting in this game. There are some spells that are higher level but deal less damage than lower level ones (fireball outdamages flame strike). Also, spell damage seems really out of place. When I fight 3 arches, I know they do 10-15 damage to me. However a single 30hp spellcaster can AOE me for 60+ damage with some ice spells. Also, game should have more tutorials about rules for non-tabletop players. Half of game I didnt know why "sometimes" my spells deal exacly half of the dice damage. It took me sometime what is concentation about. I didn't knew why some enemies cancel my spells. What conditions are to deal bonus damage with rogue, etc.
I've never played other Drinkbox games, so I am not comparing it to anything - just reviewing as a game. I've played it coop with my wife and it was very fun and entertaining experience. We've finished the game, finishing almost every quest and maxing every character to S-tier. For art - certainly, there is some sort of feeling and consisent style in everthing, like how levels are build, how characters and monsters look like, etc. The game has really good music however, there are several really memorable tracks. Gameplay-wise it was very nice experience. You start out as simple human but then gain new characters you can transform into. Every character has its own passive & active abilities, statistics and micro quests attached to them. There is a ton of content in form of secrets, quests, challenges, dungeons, etc. Developers tried really hard to come up with something clever all the time and it really worked well. I love that, depsite quite simple mechanis, a lot of quests (both NPC and character quests) require you to do something in proper place, with proper setup. From technical point of view, we expected no bugs, glitches, crashes, slowdowns, etc. Game is very polished from technical point of view (we did not try online play however). The minor drawbacks I've found are: 1. UI displays when completing quests take too long time. 2. One that I think should be REALLY fixed is game balance in coop game. I think playing coop spoils game a lot. In coop, if one player falls, they must simply wait 10 seconds to come back with full HP/MP. This makes game a lot easier, as you can beat basically ANY dungeon without a trouble, if you remember to avoid enemies for those 10 seconds (also food stops being resource in COOP as you can die and come back with full HP). Game would be WAY better in coop if, instead of waiting 10s, other player should have to progress dungeon to a certain checkpoint to revive dead ally. COOP lacked challenge unfortunately. 5 stars from us!
Its basically everything from D:OS1 but better. + engaging story with a lot of plot detail (npc will react differently when they see you are undead) + quest system is streamlined, its easier to play without walkthrough; still retains RPG-ish sense of exploration and engagement + more skills, classes, schools, items, more everything + better battle mechanics without RNG status effects abuse + more 3d combat with elevation, high-ground bonuses + probably the most beautiful level design I've ever seen in RPG game - playing on normal is too easy, playing on hard is too hard - music in first one was better, more rememberable? - monsters/enemies are just models with sticked various spells on them, everything uses same subset of abilities as player do (you will see spiders casting geomancy spells etc.) - game does not encourage crafting as much as it should, you end with party overloaded with items - there are too much status effects that have minor influence on game
This game combines idea of original Hammerwatch, expanding it with a lot more options like more classes, character development, town managment, equipment and such. While everything seems to be very nice, unfortunately this game is lost money for me. Why? I am playing this type of games with my wife in coop. Depending on game, we either play on separate PC on LAN or we connect my laptop to TV and play on two pads in a console-like fashion. We played through original Hammewatch on LAN. Unfortunately this is not the case for Heroes of Hammerwatch because there is no ability to play on LAN. So we've tried to create internet lobby but we cannot connect to each other (while random people may were connecting to our games) and we tried many things like disabling firewalls and such. It just dont want to work. If we had a LAN option, we could simply create LAN game and play it that way. We were playing on separate GOG accounts with two copies of game. Game does not support local coop so we cant just connect laptop to TV and play on two pads either. This means I am basically left with two copies of unplayable game and I am certainly not happy about that. About gameplay - I've played it solo for ~30 minutes just to check it out. Gameplay is as good as it was in previous game. The thing I lack here is proper tutorial explaining those uncommon game design decisions, I was asking questions to myself all the time: 1) why I lost all of my equipment from previous playthrough 2) how i equip new items 3) how I should save my progress 4) should I go to arena or dungeon etc. I don't mind the gameplay decisions but I had to rely on external sources to realize whats going on here.
