Krater pre-alpha Steam keys giveaway + feedback wanted!

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I would still be grateful for any sort of mini-review, summary or even just a witty one-liner about the game.

Is it a action-RPG hack&slash Diablo clone in post-apoc setting? A aRPG like Divinity II? Old-skool hardcore?

Anyone?

Wish I could help, but I could not play it because of DX10 requirement.

It's a mix of Diablo and Dawn of War 2. You choose & control 3 bros, each with its own abilities (tank, healer, melee fighter, ranged fighter, etc...) and must hack & slash through some dungeons, complete quests, gather phat lewt and the usual ARPG stuff. I did a mini LP of the beta some pages ago, give it a look and you'll understand.

Thanks felipepe!

How's the system? Lot's of freedom when leveling, or not so much?

I have a question about the game if anyone wants to answer it. The Steam page with the features list mentions something about permanent injury and death.

The death part I get...

What is this permanent injury system? It intrigues me.


Very tempted to buy this just to support some Swede bros. I dig your furniture.

EDIT: Forget tempted. I will buy it when I get home, but I would still love some more information about the injury and death system.

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2012/06/14/krater-launches-perhaps-not-quite-ready/

I bought the 20$ version on Steam that came with some special medic and the soundtrack. The soundtrack is great.

I only played a few minutes of it last night, I wasn't feeling well.

It starts off rough, but it seems like it has good potential. I'll see if I can get a better impression after the weekend.

Impressions?

1. Soundtrack/score for the game: Amazing. I have no regrets spending the extra money on Steam to get the version that came with soundtrack.
2. Art style: The game is very pleasing to my eye. The game is definitely post-apocalyptic, but the game still has a very nice color palate and not just brown and grey.
3. Writing: The writing is quite entertaining, but I could see how some of the silliness might put some off, especially if they only like their post-apoc if it is grim/dark. The silliness gives the characters sort of an amicable insanity.
4. Gameplay: I do enjoy the gameplay, its kind of RTS-like with some RPG elements. There are 4 classes in the game: a tank, a healer, a CC'er, and a DPS. However, you can have 3 party members at one time and you almost always will need a tank so the other two choices need to be chosen carefully.

I love the world map, however, I always love world maps. While there are random encounters, there are not random maps for the encounters... so basically Fallout or SoZ.

There are rough edges, or at least areas that are not immediately clear. For example, characters you can "hire" are color coded, similar to loot. So a grey character member might only be able to level up to 5, where as a green might level up to 10 or 15. That's just one example.

Supposedly multiplayer is coming, I don't know what that will be like.

I haven't had any crashes.

It's a good game. I feel like my money was well spent.

It's bland.

I should add that I don't find the game difficult, but I'm only a few hours in.

Played some more tonight.

I don't know if it is the music or what, but the whole game experience is just very pleasing and chill.

I mean the game isn't particularly hard right now, though my medic (dr.Cerebro) will occasionally dance into trouble, and I actually think I like that right now. I can just enjoy the music and do quests/mobs/loot etc. It's like Diablo, but more pleasing.

I found my first annoying bug tonight, I had my doctor get stuck in world geometry and had to evac the dungeon, no big deal.

I'm enjoying it.

hey the developers themselves came here and handed us some alpha keys. i think the game deserves a proper codex review.

Well, I've spent the last 5h in the game. And unfortunately, I reached the same conclusion: it's bland.

Gameworld
The game tries to be post-apocalyptic and funny. Unfortunately the dark and subtle humor from Fallout is nowhere to be found.
I think the developers tried too much in this direction. But if something doesn't come naturally, it should not be done. Anyway, no damage done.
In other words, the story is as thin as it can be for a hack-n-slash. Completely forgettable.

Classes and Skill system
The game has 4 classes: bruiser, slayer (tank), medic (healer) and regulator (dps/ranger). At this point, we all know were this is going
Each class has 2 special abilities with cool-downs and besides the default weapon, each class can also use a second weapon/buff/gizmo.
Also the skills system is standard: strength, stamina, intelligence, focus ... etc. All of the skills can be increased with implants. All abilities can be improved with buffs.
There are no perks and the final stats (damage/health) are depending directly on the skills.

Combat
The abilities of each class are the same for the entire game, which means that there are 6 abilities in total for the entire party (max 3 characters). And this limitation is the greatest flaw of the game.
It's clear that the total number of combinations for these abilities is limited. But more annoying is the fact that the combat consists of actually one single decision: Do I heal the tank or the ranger?
Any competent player will spam the rest of abilities as soon as they become active, but using the medic abilities on the right character is what matters. This is Wow like combat.
However I should point out that the combat is fluid and responsive. This part is fun. I cannot deny it ... and is the same for the entire game.

Leveling
One character can have up to 20 implant slots and several ranks, I think two slots are unlocked per rank and the start package is of 4 slots.
The funny part is that you have to buy the ranks: first 3 ranks 3000 gold, next 3 ranks 20000 gold ... and so on.
Once you finish a set of 3 ranks, all your experience points are wasted until you buy the next set of 3 ranks.
This mechanism not only transform the game in a grinding machine, but it opens too many implants slots. With minimal care all slots can be filled with junk implants and the sheer amount of them can have a big impact.

Difficulty
The game is pretty well balanced, considering the abundance of implants. There is no level scaling, which means that you can grind lower level caves when you find them.
Also the AI of the mobs is serviceable, they really don't have many options as canon food.

Visuals
For an indie studio, the graphics are superb. Honestly, the game looks really good. And this is a major reason why I played for so much time.
This and the fact that I bought the game. This game's engine is perfect for a proper RPG. But this is wishful thinking.

Others
The music is good. The dialogues are funnily mumbled and there are a lot of NPCs with not much to say.
There is an free roaming map, but no quests with C&C. A lot of retarded encounters on the map and Alt+Tab problems.
The game seems to be designed for multiplayer, but I did not try that option.

Overall
It might hit the spot for some people, but I sincerely doubt it can really do it for a seasoned codexer.
It feels like Torchlight, but is worse than Torchlight. I simply don't have the nerves to play such a game.
The game has certain qualities, but it feels too much as a product. Bland as a MMORPG in single player.

Happy now?

That is a fair review, except you got the classes wrong:

Bruiser => Tank
Slayer =>DPS
Medic => Healer
Regulater => Controller

all classes can do damage, only the slayer is good at it.

Also, the skills MIGHT be changeable, I say this because dr.Cerebro has two different healing skills than the default medic:

Default medic:
single target burst heal
single target channeling heal spell

dr.Cerebro:
AoE burst heal that hits multiple targets
Single target Heal DoT

They also said that they will continue to improve and add to the game. For example, party members you have to recruit, either through quests or at the recruitment center. THey have a rarity associated with, like items (grey, green, blue, etc) and that determines how high they can upgrade. They just added a "boot camp" npc that will allow you to upgrade your party members to a higher level.

...and while the game may not challenge a hard core KKKodexer, it *IS* Iron Man and death is permanent.

yes. much better. though still not on the scale of the d3 review.

You are correct. I've got the classes wrong. I've put only Strength implants on my bruiser and he was the king of damage.

Dr. Cerebro is a special DLC character and I don't want to use DLC characters. It's like using a DLC weapon, I just don't like it. Which means I will never experience Dr. Cerebro.

In order to buy the ranks, I was using the Bootcamp NPC, but I did not know that he was added later. How could you upgrade ranks before the Bootcamp NPC?

I should also mention that the crafting was a pleasant surprise when I could actually craft a good weapon.
And talking about Iron Man mode, I really like the permanent injuries. My regulator is crippled as fuck, but no team members are left behind

Cool. The game is polished, but it's missing the spark. If you are after a serviceable Torchlight, you might give it a go.

nah i think i'll miss out on that game.

I got a copy for review. So far it's... I dunno, kind of a mess. Sure, it's pretty-looking and has good music, but the combat is a real clusterfuck and I don't think all the mechanics work well for a game of this sort.

1. Since you can't see very far ahead, 99% of battles you just run right into, resulting in your party getting mobbed. Setting up any sort of strategy is useless.
2. Combat moves very fast, and the lack of a pause option can make managing what's going on a bit too difficult.
3. Selecting skills from the quick bar using the mouse doesn't always work.
4. Fighting seems decided a lot less by skill and a lot more by gear and party level.
5. Almost every time I've died, it hasn't been because I made mistakes, but because I just suddenly ran into a far more powerful enemy who completely destroyed my party in a few seconds.
6. Boss fights are pure attrition, don't have the HP to tank it, you die, end of story.
7. Respawning enemies (and even level progress) fucking sucks. I realise it can be considered an exploit to leave and come back, but since you auto-heal so fast, attrition only matters within a single fight, not the whole level. If I have to go back to town and get better gear to win, why should I have to replay the whole level? Especially annoying on those "get me 20 of X item" missions where you have to explore the entire level and then you fight some stupid-hard boss at the end that invalidates all of your progress.
8. Injuries are cool but it's kind of a grindy gold and time sink rather than a really valuable addition to the game.

I dunno, maybe I just suck at it or something, but I'm not finding it especially fun and even a couple hours in it's getting pretty damn repetitive. If what I'm seeing with character progression is true (max rank 15, same abilities for every class) then it kind of feels like I've already seen the entire game by now.

EDIT: After playing a bit more, it seems some enemies respawn, some don't. Weird. Also, the game is 100% loot driven. As far as I can tell attributes don't go up when you level, it's all tied to upgrades, so leveling is basically useless except that it provides more slots to install implants.

EDIT 2: Now the game is stupid-easy most of the time, except when I misclick somewhere and send my healer off to die... or stupid-hard, if I enter a zone that's too far ahead of me. I think the big problem is just the lack of feedback as to what challenge level a dungeon is, coupled with frustrating "do it again, stupid" punishment when you die. Also, lack of any new skills is really, really getting boring. 30-40 hours of gameplay, maybe, but who cares if you see it all after 2-3?

Anyway, my impressions are a bit better, I think I just hit a weird difficulty snag early on. But it still doesn't really change that the game is kind of boring. Hack and slash RPGs are supposed to be all about unlocking new skills and abilities, fighting new enemies, getting new gear, etc. and Krater seems to have run out of ideas already.

You are correct about the camera, but so wrong about the abilities: they are by default linked to 1-9 keys. That's the only way to play this game.
The enemies are re-spawning only if you died in that cave. Otherwise I think they re-spawn after a time.
Injuries are a good indicator of which character sucks.

Fatshark keeps coming up with good ideas but doesn't do so hot in the execution department. Not really excited about their upcoming Mount and Blade clone.

More impressions based on around 5-6 hours of play, phrased as suggestions for the developer (because I'm so good at copypasta).

1. Don't make an RPG where there is zero meaningful progression whatsoever (no, bigger numbers does not equal progression - leveling is useless if you do not open new gameplay options and possibilities through it).
2. Explain core mechanics and controls (like level caps on party members, hotkeys to exit dungeons, etc.) - you even have a tutorial so why does it not teach these important things?
3. Don't boast "200 quests" and then make up that number with boring, repetitive fetch quests and by cutting up existing quests into multiple parts.
4. Don't create multiple weapon types that have no functional difference - everything is measured as DPS so why does it matter if I have a sword or an axe? Other RPGS have things like damage types and secondary effects for a reason - it makes you think about the equipment you use and when.
5. Don't make a game where you have "30-40 hours of gameplay" but where players have seen every single thing your game has to offer (except pretty graphics) within the first 10 minutes.

At this point, I would like to see a post from the developer

Fuck that loser

Pretty sure they're busy working on War of the Roses now.