The demo delivered a promise for a well polished game. It seems the time bought from the succesful kickstarter gave the devs a decent reimbursement, and time to make the encounters that give the story. It seems the polish did not really come. Time seems to have been spent on the graphical development rather than tqeaking game mechanics and integrating the story. Although the story is rich, it is delivered in exposition in LARGE chunks with a rinse and repeat of the demo. This makes Crying suns very dissapointing. (I purchased on steam as a tip of the proverbial hat to the dev, as they sought greatest exposure there). I regret it, because I prefer the gog platform. I feel this is another dissapointment from the dev. The story is fun but flawed for the world in which the game plays. And the whole rogue lite element seems broken by the improper integration of the story. I feel like this is where the greatest criticism to the genre comes, that rogue lite is an excuse for not developing more content, just rehashing the same content over and over. I enjoyed the game. but truly expected more. And regret paying the $35AUD price tag.I truly wish I waited to get this on sale.
Ash of Gods (AoG) takes its inspiration from a trilogy of award winning books of the same name and The Banner Saga (TBS), an excellent game series with its first release in 2014. As such I would say for everything for which The Banner Saga was praised, you will find it in Ash of Gods. The noticeable difference is that the campaign, has strangely fit a complete story into a singular episode rather than TBS spanning three and with the kickstarter generating only $90k. Ash of Gods feels like a passion project, with a lot of effort placed into making things feel consistent and enjoyable reflecting the quality of the things which inspired it. This review is for the English version. 30 hrs. 4 days. The mechanics, art style, animation, combat system and sound design of AoG are almost identical to TBS. With TBS being such a cult hit, it begs the question how many unfavourable reviews AoG is receiving from defensive fans of TBS. Yes, The Banner Saga was beautiful; but does that mean that something inspired by TBS should be trashed? Frankly when I stumbled upon AoG I welcomed another production that plays with the same mechanics to tell a detailed story with rich and interesting lore, considering that the author (Sergey Malitsky) is lauded as a great story teller I chose to check AoG regardless of the reviews on GOG. After completing AoG, my theory rests that Aurumdust were massive fans of Sergey Malitsky and once playing The Banner Saga, realised just how easily the story could be told within the same framework. We can argue of intellectual property, but that does not make this a bad game. The writing is great, entertaining and rich. Play this game if you like to read. The combat comes second to the merits of the story. The decisions that the player is faced with feel contextual and play on the personalities very well. The story enables a great sense of investment. The translation has flaws at points. But any player who has been paying attention won't find it confusing.
