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Demons Age by Bigmoon Studios - turn-based RPG "highly inspired" by Chaos Chronicles

Saark

Arcane
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Jun 16, 2010
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2,205
A Beautifully Desolate Campaign
Projects this small don't do market research. It's obvious that they don't have character creation or levelups because they haven't gotten around to implementing them.
I agree with you. But, given that the game was meant to be multi-platform from the start (PS4/X1/PC) and that the rate of hardcore cPRG players on consoles is not that high, since we wanted to make sure the game is appealing that audience too, aligned with the first tests we made with people that chose classes that didn't have much synergy with the races (hindering their chances to progress in the game, because the difficulty would rise), we decided to create 16 characters with all races with the most suitable classes for each of them.

This totally sounds like "we could've but decided against it". Someone in the company decided to go this route, which is retarded for a multitude of reasons. 16 pre-sets is actually quite a lot, not to mention that someone had to sift through all possible character-development options to create 16 pre-sets for every single level. You could probably have implemented the UI and mechanics required for player-driven creation and development in the same time, and given the player the choice between the two. Having a working character creation and 16 pre-sets for people who are too lazy/stupid for it would've actually been impressive.
But we all know this for what it is and I am simply sick of all this duplicitous PR bullshitting. Projects like these are a prime example why so many indie devs/companies fail after their first release.

Who made the decision to make a game with a budget like this multi-platform?
Who thought that this meant the removal one of the core-features of any RPG ever, since that would appeal to non-hardcore RPG players more?
Did they actually ask people whether the "feature" of creating your own character "confuses" them? If so, why did they not shoot them in the face.
Why would an indie even try to appeal to the masses? How many indie-games do you know of that managed to succeed with such an outset? Most indie games that eventually did succeed on such a scale didn't even aim to do so.

Even after all all those stupid and retarded decisions this would've been at least somewhat excusable if the people who made those decisions actually owned up to them. Looking at those screenshots the game could've been "good for what it is", something most recent AAA RPG projects didnt manage to achieve. But they don't own up to their decisions, instead they try to mask this shit as being "helpful" or "good" for the player, insinuating that they know more and/or are smarter than the actual playerbase (considering the games gets released on PS4/XBOX this point could be debated actually). This "we know better than you customers, trust us" attitude is a trend I've noticed recently in most major companies, and I cannot for the love of god understand why indies would try to walk down the same road. Don't compete with AAA projects by emulating what they did, be different.

The only amusing thing here is that for some reason I first read this PR-dudes name as "purple Drog" and immediately started wondering how many differently coloured alts are out there. Does the color indicate anything, like what type of AI it uses? Why did they send the purple one to the codex?
 

Tigranes

Arcane
Joined
Jan 8, 2009
Messages
10,350
I can't decide which is worse, that they would cut character development by choice or by accident.

Is the combat itself enjoyable and well built?
 

Grunker

RPG Codex Ghost
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A Review of Demons Age
by Grunker
This "game" is full of suck.
dongs/10

It's great when even the grogs get burned by cargo cult design.

Read the last couple of pages of the thread. No one had any hope for this. And playing this, cargo cult design would be an upgrade. It seems there is no design at all here.
 
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passerby

Arcane
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Nov 16, 2016
Messages
2,788
We already have a functional custom character creator (for test/dev purposes) and we intend to release it after the retail release which will happen later on in july.

Game director / producer confirmed for retard.

What's really bizarre is how they combine all this "character creation & development is too hard for casuals!!!" with with things that are MUCH more difficult. Like, death is permanent. Got a critical hit on your Wizard? Game Over.
But worse than that: companions cost A LOT of money and also die permanently... spent all your monies on a companion but he died? Better reload, 'cause now you're alone, poor and all the gear on him vanished.

I hate this "unconsious" shit, when you don't have to care about keeping your team alive, completely changes how you play the game. So, thanks felipepepe now they'll remove permadeath too.
 

Infinitron

I post news
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Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
market-research

Projects this small don't do market research. It's obvious that they don't have character creation or levelups because they haven't gotten around to implementing them.

This is how this kind of thing happens. The project is late. Things are badly broken. Money's running out. Emergency meeting gets called. They list all the things that are broken. They agree that they'll be dead, broke, or both before they manage to finish half of them. Then somebody says, "OK guys, what is the absolute, total, complete minimum we have to do to turn this into a playable game?" Then chop, chop, chop.

If it's a rookie team who didn't know how to prioritise and spent their time on fluff, then at this point they'll end up cutting what should have been core features. The end result will be very weird, with something of the original design intent showing through -- groggy, hardcore mechanics, punishing difficulty -- with the bits that really should have been there to make them work left on the floor. Always assuming they don't find a quick-and-dirty way to bring the rest of the game in line with its new shape, e.g. by getting rid of permadeath and such.

tl;dr it's a mess but market research isn't to blame, just plain ol' inexperience.

Similarly, it's possible that there's permadeath not because that was an intentional design decision but because they couldn't implement a knockout/resurrection system.

Good lord, is this game just a souped up version of whatever state Chaos Chronicles' code was in back in 2013?
 

ArchAngel

Arcane
Joined
Mar 16, 2015
Messages
19,885
market-research

Projects this small don't do market research. It's obvious that they don't have character creation or levelups because they haven't gotten around to implementing them.

This is how this kind of thing happens. The project is late. Things are badly broken. Money's running out. Emergency meeting gets called. They list all the things that are broken. They agree that they'll be dead, broke, or both before they manage to finish half of them. Then somebody says, "OK guys, what is the absolute, total, complete minimum we have to do to turn this into a playable game?" Then chop, chop, chop.

If it's a rookie team who didn't know how to prioritise and spent their time on fluff, then at this point they'll end up cutting what should have been core features. The end result will be very weird, with something of the original design intent showing through -- groggy, hardcore mechanics, punishing difficulty -- with the bits that really should have been there to make them work left on the floor. Always assuming they don't find a quick-and-dirty way to bring the rest of the game in line with its new shape, e.g. by getting rid of permadeath and such.

tl;dr it's a mess but market research isn't to blame, just plain ol' inexperience.

Similarly, it's possible there's permadeath not because that was an intentional design decision but because they couldn't implement a knockout/resurrection system.

Good lord, is this game just a souped up version of whatever state Chaos Chronicles' code was in back in 2013?
Lets put it like this. I told them back in 2015 that turn based combat it too slow and unpolished. Then I suggested they speed up enemy movement and put in default commands (like if you want to move you just clikc on ground and if you want to attack with your most logical attack - Standard action after moving, Full attack if you didn't move - you just click on enemy). Between end of 2015 and today none of this has been changed. You still wait for frogs to slowly jump over to you and you still need to click a button that says move or standard attack before doing that even with having no other options.
 

Prime Junta

Guest
The sad thing is, there is a game in there, somewhere. Probably too far gone to rescue, so the best thing to do is to put it out of its misery and start over.
 

Saark

Arcane
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A Beautifully Desolate Campaign
Good lord, is this game just a souped up version of whatever state Chaos Chronicles' code was in back in 2013?
In a world where there's either a dev that got some assets from an old game, decided its not worth the hassle to improve on them and then released those assets years later with little to no polishing, or a dev that actually tried to deliver on a semi-hardcore RPG promise but failed in some of the most importants aspects of RPGs in general... I'd choose option 1. It doesn't do the original justice in any way, shape or form, but at least it wouldn't be ineptitude that's to blame, but lack of trying.
The only real crime is that this will be called "full release" when it could've just awell found a nice plot on the graveyard that is abandoned early-access games.
 

Sitra Achara

Arcane
Joined
Sep 1, 2003
Messages
1,859
Codex 2012 Codex 2013 Codex 2014 PC RPG Website of the Year, 2015
Good lord, is this game just a souped up version of whatever state Chaos Chronicles' code was in back in 2013?

Oh that looks very familiar. I'd heard about that game the first time right here at the codex.

They even adopted my debug character names for the default party :lol:

bitComposer filed for insolvency early this year, they are out of business. It seems, Bigmoon studios bought some 'Chaos Chronicles' assets from bitComposer before (I fear bC didn't inform Bigmoon about the legal dispute regarding the copyright).

And according to this trailer, the 3d engine (no lightmaps?) and the combat system are totally different to CC. I highly doubt latter is D&D 3.5e; looks more like D&D 5 to me.

Sounds like a completely different codebase, just reusing the game art assets and such. Probably stripped from a milestone build they sent to shitCompostor before the dispute.
 

Galdred

Studio Draconis
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Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
I won't be digging back old posts but, given the latest subject of preset characters, it was a hard call. I don't particularly like it myself, but it helps to ease up the constraints new players have when jumping into this kind of games.

Eh no, no it doesn't. You can have preset characters as the default and an advanced option to start with a custom character.

There is, however, a plan to develop a Custom Character Creator in the near future.

Cool! How near future do you suppose that'll be?

I agree with you. But, given that the game was meant to be multi-platform from the start (PS4/X1/PC) and that the rate of hardcore cPRG players on consoles is not that high, since we wanted to make sure the game is appealing that audience too, aligned with the first tests we made with people that chose classes that didn't have much synergy with the races (hindering their chances to progress in the game, because the difficulty would rise), we decided to create 16 characters with all races with the most suitable classes for each of them.

We already have a functional custom character creator (for test/dev purposes) and we intend to release it after the retail release which will happen later on in july. As I think I've mentioned, that was my first issue as soon as I laid my hands on the game, so I'm with you on this and I hope this gets released soon too :)

As for why are the portraits in 3D, it's a fully rendered image of your character with whatever you have equipped. So it changes whenever you equip something, instead of being a 2D static image. I'd rather have it as it is, in this case. I like to see changes on the portraits as I equip something.



Janise: what? No Friends add? Pffft
bear in mind that I go waaaaaaaaaaaaay back. I'm an old dude... games like Jagged Alliance I, II, Crossfire and Wildfire and so many others were played thoroughly prior to having its' playtime counted on steam :) Also, around 3000+ hours of dota are streaming/watching watching games or simply afk because I went to bed and left it running :) Also, recently i've been playing offline so that my kids can use the shared games feature to play on the steam link. Cool feature.

EDIT - 75h on GameMaker... i WISH it had only been 75h
Why would non hardcore RPG players had any interested in the game, even without leveling decision? It still won't make it look like a shooter or an action game as far as I can tell.
And I think you got it completely backwards:
Now, whenever anyone will die, the player will blame the random perks that were assigned to him on level up, and tank the game review a bit more on metacritic or steam.
It even happens sometimes with RNG, so I am pretty sure your leveling "choices" will be held responsible by many for the failure of their team.
 

felipepepe

Codex's Heretic
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I hate this "unconsious" shit, when you don't have to care about keeping your team alive, completely changes how you play the game. So, thanks felipepepe now they'll remove permadeath too.
There's hardcore and there's dumb. Companion permadeth is hardcore. All their items magically vanishing when they die is dumb.

In fact, I hate how enemies all look well-equipped and even have healing potions and such, but nothing drops after battle. If they had any plot-important item, it just appears in your inventory. If we assume permadeth is due to lack of knockout/resurrection, I wouldn't be surprised if this is because they haven't created a system for looting dead bodies. :/
 

Prime Junta

Guest
^
That sounds like a pre-alpha game. Some systems completely missing, and the gaps stuck together with wire, bubble gum, and duct tape.
 

ArchAngel

Arcane
Joined
Mar 16, 2015
Messages
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^
That sounds like a pre-alpha game. Some systems completely missing, and the gaps stuck together with wire, bubble gum, and duct tape.
It is what I talked about in this topic in last few weeks, it is as I expected. Unfinished and unpolished.
 

dragonul09

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Dec 19, 2014
Messages
1,445
To be extra thorough, I played the game for 20 minutes. Only 20 minutes, you say? Well, that was more than enough time to instantly want to remove the game from my hard drive and never see it again. In fact, don't ever anonymously gift me something like this again.

So, where to start? The art style. What art style? I played in 4K resolution and it had brilliant art details like frog creatures that have the same texture, color and all, as the ground they were hopping over. Great way to save money, time and effort, but a good art style that does not make. If you enjoy shades of brown and everything looking alike, this game might be for you.

At the start of the "game" (I use that term loosely) you're greeted by totally synchronous rowers on a slave ship, all of which looked almost exactly the same (and these were supposed to be main characters you were going to play the game as), brilliant. Exquisite, even. Each one apparently has different pre-made stats with no options whatsoever to change, and some back history that wasn't interesting in the slightest to read. I selected the dwarf chick, who didn't look at all like a dwarf. Moving on.

Now let me opine about the wonderful gameplay. Combat, where you have 1 choice to make - Attack. And the enemies have the same choice - Attack. And if that wasn't enough, everything is delayed, like the engine can't even get the damn thing moving properly. You get a slow ass Enemy Turn message. Then the slow ass enemy takes their time to stand there and attack, probably missing you. Then, you get another slow ass Player Turn message. It might take you 6 or 7 rounds of this BS to kill the first creature you encounter, on "Normal" difficulty. It's absurd.

Oh, and there's 2 creatures in the first encounter. Double the fun! Could they have maybe, somehow threw in a secondary attack for them? Something? Anything?!

And that "real-time exploration" you'll be enjoying? You're wasting your "real time" with it. The starting area is about the size of Shaquille O'Neal's shoebox. This random guy who's supposed to be patrolling the area and sees you there, tells you all about how you have to go to this town if you want to earn your freedom from slavery, and whaddya know, the entrance to these weird sewers to get there is right behind him. No other exit, spot or anything of interest whatsoever to be found. Oh, there is one thing to find on that screen, a chest that is 10 meters to the north. It might have literally nothing in it. No, seriously, nothing. Or you might pull a sweet 3 gold, or some boring ass piece of loot. Did I mention I found repeating boring ass loot in the first few chests alone? A few lovely pairs of the same Orcish Shoes, or something. And great text descriptions for them, like "This makes me stronger, and you…deader." Complete with syntax and grammatical errors to boot. Lovely, really.

So the sewers have a bunch of empty rooms with boring chests that may also be empty, and a couple frogs. The same frogs I mentioned with the same texture and color as the floor they're on. They also have a resounding 1 attack. No tactics, no anything. Slow to kill, no loot drops from any of the 4 enemies we've killed so far, no purpose to play. I reached a locked gate that had no apparent way of opening it. No key anywhere nearby, no lever or switch, no reason to keep torturing myself by playing this game.

But does it have an interesting story, perhaps? You may be wondering. Well, probably not. The writing was boring, apparently your slave ship crashed and now you must brave this strange new world in search of freedom! The guy who washes up on shore with you, which maybe could have added intrigue, says absolutely nothing important and then proceeds to die. Yet he still takes up a few minutes of your precious time with his slow ass talking. A complete waste. Then you loot a bunch of chests that are too huge and not scaled properly for the screen, each with again, the exquisite loot drops I've mentioned already. And by the way, be prepared for the slowest voice acting you've ever heard in your life. Like the combat, it lags, in that it seems like the voice actors are continuously waiting for their queue to speak. Then, it's slow speaking. And not interesting. With no options in dialogue whatsoever, except apparently, "Skip", and "Skip All". Oohwee! I wonder what happens when I Skip All! Let me skip all this game.

If you have any questions to ask me about my time with the game, just forget them. Don't ask. Don't support this "game", which appears to be a blatant scam. Oh, you guys do know they were/are asking $60 for this? 60. BUCKS. USD. And there's literally no press release or anything, just a $60 dung heap about to be dropped on unsuspecting buyers' heads.

Buyer, beware!

Doesn't sound too bad:lol:
 

Infinitron

I post news
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Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
lol https://www.rpgwatch.com/forums/showpost.php?p=1061458209&postcount=5

fluent said:
I can confirm that Archangel is giving this game way, WAY too much leeway. If only his views were so kind and patient towards actually good RPGs that released recently, maybe I'd take his post more serious.

But, if you are a fan of the classic CRPG mechanics of "Choices & Consequences", Demons Age does give you the options to Skip, and Skip All in dialogue. What more choice do you need, really?

Do as the game says - Skip.
smiley2.gif

https://www.rpgwatch.com/forums/showpost.php?p=1061458219&postcount=6

joxer said:
Is it just me or this game smells like Neo scavenger of 2017?
Disliked on this site (includes me), crowned as goty, erm, on certain other site.

>_>
 

PrettyDeadman

Guest
wtf is "But, if you are a fan of the classic CRPG mechanics of "Choices & Consequences"" ?

Choices & Consequences were always classic mechanics of Adventure games, not CRPG games.

Planescape Torment committed a sin of muddying genre terminology by being a pretty good adventure game with some shitty rpg elements which was crowned as a gold standart of crpg.

Unsurprisingly, having a good game with shitty crpg elements as a gold standart of crpg lead to an era of shitty CRPGs and idea that CRPGs are supposed to be about Choices&Consequences, not about some solid turn&based combat.

I am really excited about Demons Age and hope it will become the Fourth best crpg after Dark Sun 1: Shattered Lands, Temple of Elemental Evil and Knights of the Chalice.
 

ArchAngel

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wtf is "But, if you are a fan of the classic CRPG mechanics of "Choices & Consequences"" ?

Choices & Consequences were always classic mechanics of Adventure games, not CRPG games.

Planescape Torment committed a sin of muddying genre terminology by being a pretty good adventure game with some shitty rpg elements which was crowned as a gold standart of crpg.

Unsurprisingly, having a good game with shitty crpg elements as a gold standart of crpg lead to an era of shitty CRPGs and idea that CRPGs are supposed to be about Choices&Consequences, not about some solid turn&based combat.

I am really excited about Demons Age and hope it will become the Fourth best crpg after Dark Sun 1: Shattered Lands, Temple of Elemental Evil and Knights of the Chalice.
Classic adventure games didn't even have C out of Choice&Consequence. It was all about finding the right combination of steps to do to progress the story. They were more like puzzle games with story.

And Demons Age has 0 chance to become a great game. It has a small chance to become a decent game.
 
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Roguey

Codex Staff
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Had Bigmoon used RPG Maker to do this, it'd actually feel like a finished jrpg instead of an unfinished one. :M
 

Talby

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Codex USB, 2014
Is this the big Demon's Souls/Dragon Age crossover we've all been waiting for?
 

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