..and did not bother to restart - what a bummer. You are introduced to Mick, who is willing to give you food if you are on the low end of cash, but he only mentioned that this help is limited when it was too late. Ended up with no cash, no food and no ability to sleep cause that is costing food. Also had no bar unlocked for looking through the thrash for burger. This happened on my first try, since I thought Mick is some kind of Father for our protagonist as "Rocky" is to "Creed", yet he is only a workaround for incoherent and untransparent gameplay design. Bad.
The game features a pixel art-style from 1980, but after playing the game for a couple of minutes you instantly realize that it oddly enough feels more vivid than modern games trying to emulate reality with their graphics. Why is that? - Every pixel in the world inhibits "real-world" features in terms of stability, combustibility and characteristics that determine how they interact with one another stuff. There is even a feint of physical algorithm in terms of kinetics. - The game treats does not treat you like an infant, but a grown-up being trying to get along in world like anybody else. You need to find out how it works, every point of health-damage is important to you and your enemies. Progressing through levels and solving problems can be done in multiple strategies. - Wand-building is a kind of simple in-game programming and you get explanations as well as dummies and a display-wall in order to find out how it actually works, as if you are the little magician yourself that needs to learn his powers. - Game is not easy, but still motivates to go on after dying simply 'cause the gameplay and world-building is topnotch, which includes a reasonable UI and control-scheme for a PC. In 2022 this is no longer a matter of course. For whom is this game? I'd say for everyone. It is possible that the difficulty and requirement for the player to learn interactively through "try and error" will chase off some players after a couple of hours, but it is not unlikely that these people will return to their Gog-library a few years later to give it another try. Highly recommended!
I wish I'd never started this game as my autism enforced me to finish it. It fails on so many levels like depth of mechanics, convenience, control and game-flow. - The game is about destroying and looting, yet there is a delay of about a second until items can be picked up, which permanently enforces you to either wait or micro-backtrack even with increased pickup radius. - They even added a delay between cycling weapons in a single-player game. You can't double or triple click in order to switch two or three weapons, since the commands will be ignored during the delay, instead of being queued in. It is so slow and unresponsive, it is easier to switch into inventory and equip items, especially when you want to cycle through 2-3 items. - Movement feels very sluggish like controlling a person on ice-skates. - You can't use your mouse to aim your hits properly like in other games with isometric view. This is for a ton of reasons that gog will not allow me to elaborate. - Powerattacks can only be done when you face an enemy near you while being aim-locked onto it. Since the lock activates much too late, you need to do it manually every time. - Monstermovement patterns are easy to read, certainly to compensate for the sluggish playstyle. They are also literally blind. - Have fun planting and harvesting over 500 seeds into the ground, costing you hours of lifetime only to watch a senseless animations and press 1 button every 2 seconds. - Dying is not something you need to be afraid of in this game. - Most open world areas are filled with tunnels that restrict player-movement, treating the player like a toddler, which directly corresponds to how the story progression is handled. Not recommended, even when discounted, unless you are a controller-cowboy that is okay with a very slimmed down survival game experience and sluggish game-play and controls.
How can a game with graphics from 1984 and such simply controls be that good? - The 8-bit soundtrack rocks ass in 2022! Normally 8-bit pieces of music cover existing songs, this soundtrack makes people cover 8 bit music. - The gameplay loop is addicting, mechanics are deep, but not that deep once you understood the principles and strategies, making it a game that encourages thinking without breaking the flow. - Balance and difficulty is kinda ding and dang. It is demanding at the start, but as soon as you have grown your village and crafted your supplies, you can become unstoppable. This motivates to progress and plays fully into the powerfantasy of the storyline, yet the challenge is kinda gone in the end. - Mentioning the story, it is neither good nor bad, but I did expect much less from the character writing, which is kinda neat. - Transparency and documentation of mechanics are mostly present (One exception: stamina-mechanic) - UI and menu are solid, you get to anything fast without the need for hotkeys, should be a standard for triple A games, when a group of 4 developers can get this done for a game that looks from another century. That said: Don't get turned off by the graphics! Give it a try and you will probably have a very good time!
Aren't we all used to the crap that you cannot change some or any controls in modern games? This game does not allow any configuration, so I needed to use Auto-hotkey, yet that is not where it ends. The game declares "R" for "interacting" and "F" for "talking" - a bit weird, when you think about the fact that talking is also some kind of interaction, but hey no biggie... different people, different logic. Now it begins: - Wanna change skills at a monument? What do you press? "Interacting"? Wrong! Press "talking"! You talk to objects in this game, unless they are switches, then you interact! Got it? Yes! - So, wanna open a chest? What do you press? "Interacting"? Wrong! "Talking?" Wrong! You need to press either up or down. - Wanna pick up stuff? What do you press? "Interacting"? Wrong! "Kneel?" Wrong! "tAlKing?" Wrong! You first kneel down, then press "interacting". - Wanna pray at the shrine? What do you press? "Interacting"? "talking"? "Kneeling"? "LoOkIng Up?" All wrong! Press dedicated "Shift"-button for praying, You also don't need to kneel down on this one - LOL - Going through doors? What do you press? ...I'm intimidated. This time we go mainstream and use "up" like in other games. Most people may not be bothered by such stuff, for me it is a mess having more buttons to interact than for fighting, which only consists of lefthand, righthand and rolling. The more methodical pacing while fighting is good, though and will satisfy people looking for a soulslike experience. I dislike the lack of consistency and love. You cannot jump, only dash/roll, but this did not stop the developers from putting pits with instant-death-spikes in the dark all over the place: https://imgur.com/a/pMCC7Rd As you already guessed you cant change gamma or brightness. When your fun stops at those tedious pits, it's just a cherry on top that you start barehanded and need to re-equip weapons every time at the smith (only mouse-overlay here) Not enough love!
+ beautiful art-style and soundtrack + interesting lane mechanic in combat and party mechanic for a card-game + variety of different playstyles and cardcombos + deck-building is more reliable and less gambling than in similar card-games, because of character specific cardslots for weapon- and talentcards - there are misleading descriptions for card-mechanics - a bit more variety for the soundtrack would be good - not enough animations - the "alley"-mechanic for progressing through encounters should be more maplike in terms of visualization and could need deeper mechanics than a simple "count-down", but the basic idea is fine - art-style and scenery are too good for having no in-depth story elements and no voiceovers - extreme ramp-up in difficulty for some fights - characters must be unlocked through tavern-encounters with is not in line with experience- progression, there are also not a enough encounters towards hiring characters in general All in all I want more - I am very intrigued by the setting, the lane combat mechanic as well as the composition of choosing characters, talent- and weaponcards, which reduce the randomness you have to face in deckbuilding by a reasonable amount.
The good part + You can group minions easier + You can select tiles to dig and to build on easier The bad part - Comic-like graphics that miss out on the dark tone of the first part, models look clunky and worse than the pixelstuff of part one - Hotkey-layout and bindings are a backstep, missing out important functions that you could even bind in the first part. E.g. still no no hotkeys for spells (speed or possession) or not even the (often needed) functions (selling mode, query mode). - UI controls: E.g.There is no way to tab through the panels. In part 1 you could at least least jump to the expected panel with 1-5. Here you cant, quess why? Cause 1-5 is reserved for creature abilities. That was also true in part one, but there the hotkeys simply changed depending if you were in keeper-mode or possession-mode. Incomprehensible why such a basic thing got removed. - Documentation: Not the only part being removed, also the information panel for creatures is swapped out. While you could see the stats of different creatures in part one to estimate what they are good for, even when those stats were wrongly described, the second part does not offer such a thing. You can upgrade Spells. What for? The tooltip does not tell. - Watered down game mechanics: But for what do you need documentation when you take out the interesting mechanics anyway? Room efficiency is basically gone - you can build like a moron. There is no gain of walling the rooms in, having certain shapes of them or making sure that tiny imps don't run through the library as the studying warlock rewarded such behavior with fireballs. Instead of deepening such mechanics, they removed them. This is just an excerp of what is wrong with UI, controls or mechanics, ignoring the bad level building and missing difficulty all along. This sequel is the epitome of the still present trend to make games accessible for a big audience instead of teaching your it to learn and appreciate your game.
Having played many Turn-Based-Strategy games over decades, this is the biggest let-down. Awesome visuals, including combat anymations. Great athmosphere, despite problems with much, much text to go through. Combat is absolutely flawed in its core. People saying it should be treated like chess, but in chess I dont have to move every of my pieces on the board until I may it again. Having more pieces on the board gives you a straight advantage in most cases. In this game the alternating turn-system every battle falls into an equilibrium, instead of handling the snowball-effect, which is the basis of strategy-games. I played on IronMan mode and could not even enjoy the battles i've won over 5-10 hours, cause no matter what i did. I nearly turned out the same. You either use a strat between certain character classes that is simply imbalaned or you play the equilibrium game, which transfers the combat from the actuall battlefield to the caravan to heal up characters you would have lost anyway. A real shame. I still need to give 2 Stars instead of 1, cause the animation and athmosphere is just gorgeous.
