TigerKnee
Arcane
- Joined
- Feb 24, 2012
- Messages
- 1,920
Hey, I completed this game and here are my random thoughts about it, if anyone cares. I didn't really organize it or anything.
It's a really good dungeon crawler. Actually pretty high on the list, though I can think of some things which I would like to see if anyone is ever going to make some kind of fan sequel to this.
One of my annoyance about the game is that it's impossible to see Weapon stats. Armor stats is pretty obvious. I know Sagaris will give you hints on the special weapon properties, but a lot of time I thought to myself "Is a Silver Sword or a Trident better against an animal enemy, even though the latter weapon gives a bonus to animals but the former is more expensive and hurgh?" I think I basically just went with "most expensive"
Another thing I dislike is that the further you progress in the game, the less "non-linear" it seems to get, where you basically solve one set-piece after another. I hated the Cube, because the game's auto-map breaks down there (requiring external sources or personal handmade maps) and also because it has a lot of combat compacted into its tiny area. Which is odd because I believe that is the only dungeon in the game where I felt combat rate was too high (mostly prescripted so MORPETH doesn't help). The rest of the time I would say the combat rate is perfect.
Strangely enough, I completed the Pyramid really easy/fast without an FAQ and most people seem to think it's a apparently a tedious/long place. Shrug.
I know in the interview, the creators are like "OH, the last CHAOS area is unique because it has no combat and stuff and that's ORIGINAL!" but you know what, I think that's friggin lame. I like Uukrul because I feel it's a good mix of combat and puzzling for the most part. Ironically while a lot of RPGs have the flaw of becoming too combat-centric in the end and ignoring other content (cough Bloodlines), Uukrul just does the same thing in the end-game by being TOO puzzle centric instead. Same flaw, slight variant.
Combat stuff:
The decision to only allow 1 square movement, non-diagonal attacks/ranged attacks for melee classes and having all units do movement first THEN all attack at once is interesting. I think a lot of people don't like it but I think it adds this very "psychological warfare" nature to battles even if the AI is dumb. There's this tense feeling of trying to navigate your units into the perfect position, but then sometimes you realize that instead of implementating your brilliant Sun-Tzu strategy, all you did was leave your Magician flanked by 2 dudes and your fighters are at diagonals and you are like "FFFFFFF"
The non-diagonal decision is interesting. I think allowing diagonal attacks were considered an improvement in one of the Ultima games, but in this game I think it works because you can "block" off diagonal movement with your squishier characters and not be attacked by the enemy.
To be honest, I know a lot of people say that ToEE or Gold Box is really tactical, but this is one of my favourite battle system in a dungeon crawler, which I think is surprising because most people remember the puzzles apparently.
Class Ranking:
First things first, I always liked "question answering" character creation but to be honest, there's not really any interesting choices here. A lot of classes have "dead stats" which means you won't pick those choices in character creation. I would prefer it if choices which would do something worthless like give Piety to your Fighter would maybe give some consumables instead (e.g Question 1 results: STR/DEX/VIT/"Starts with 1 Fulminating Crystal") or maybe if there were slight variants to character abilities based off their subclasses.
Magician at top of heap:
Main source of damage, CONSISTENT (a really important word here) source of healing, buffs, debuffs, utility spells... has a huge pool of mana too and if you equip a mage hat, doesn't really have mana issues unless you blow your strongest spell all the time (which you shouldn't do)
Fighter and Paladin:
Personally I don't feel these two classes differentiate themselves from each other much so I'll rank them next to each other.
I find it frustrating that there are times where it seems like both these guys would constantly miss or deal terrible damage even if they hit, leaving you to have to plink away with your caster classes.
Still, at bare minimum even if they can't deal damage at all, these guys are your linebackers, they'll use their bodies to stop the enemies from getting to your squishes, and in a lot of tactical RPGs I never actually FELT that they could do that, but in this one, it's very obvious that they can.
So the Fighter's ability is insta-weapon swap but I think the Paladin does it too? I don't think I lost a turn when I swapped weapon in-battle with a Paladin anyway. Anyway this isn't as interesting as I thought it was because weapon stats are so vague.
The Paladin Lay on Hands is interesting. I don't think it's a very good healing tool unless you absolutely need to make sure someone doesn't die NOW. What's more interesting about it is that it allows the Paladin to "attack" diagonals, albeit in a luck-based fashion. This means the Fighter is the only class that can't attack diagonals.
Though I think the Fighter's raw stats beat out the Paladin's tactical options in efficency.
These two classes, I think are saved by how strong the inherent battle system is. I do wish they had more abilities though. No need for a big menu, maybe just 1 or 2 per subclass like...
1) Berserk
2) Cleave
3) Improved Healing Lay on Hands/Improved Drain Lay on Hands.
4) Flanking attack
5) 2 Tile Polearm/Spear attack.
One thing I like is that they're also allowed to use scrolls like everyone else. A lot of RPGs makes it so that they can't which I think is kind of dumb, because they're the classes that desperately need more options.
Also the whole "Oh they don't have resource management so they got to be weaker" thing is bullcrap. If your casters are out of juice, your fighters can't do jack either without support.
Priest:
Okay I know the interviewer said this guy is awesome in the end but I never felt it. His best use to me was to summon an Elemental in each fight once that stops failing all the time. Then I wonder what to cast because it feels he generally doesn't contribute much outside of Elementals.
He has a very limited amount of attack spells compared to the Magician which... really doesn't scale that well. It's strange because I always figured the Priest would trade versatility for power seeing as how his spell list is smaller but nope. Like I thought Ralkor would always hit a single target hard no matter where you are in the game but instead at the end of the game it does laughable damage. Sirdhe heals a TEENY amount of HP once you're like level 12. The priest becomes more consistent over time but wussier outside of elementals.
And I find it weird that they try to give the Priest self-buffs and ONLY self-buffs apparently (as opposed to the Magician's targeted buffs) but melee-ing with your priest isn't even a viable strategy because he's so squishy and can't wear the really good stuff. As far as I'm concerned, that makes his limited spell list EVEN smaller with junk spells.
I'm not counting out of battle utility spells for ranking. Obviously Priest would be a lot improved then.
Also I guess ranking the classes is a moot point since you can't exactly choose your party classes. Still.
Are there any other "first person Dungeon Crawlers with a tactical battle system (as opposed to blobber)"? The only other I can think of is Gold Box. Tactical Combat is just much more interesting than blob.
It's a really good dungeon crawler. Actually pretty high on the list, though I can think of some things which I would like to see if anyone is ever going to make some kind of fan sequel to this.
One of my annoyance about the game is that it's impossible to see Weapon stats. Armor stats is pretty obvious. I know Sagaris will give you hints on the special weapon properties, but a lot of time I thought to myself "Is a Silver Sword or a Trident better against an animal enemy, even though the latter weapon gives a bonus to animals but the former is more expensive and hurgh?" I think I basically just went with "most expensive"
Another thing I dislike is that the further you progress in the game, the less "non-linear" it seems to get, where you basically solve one set-piece after another. I hated the Cube, because the game's auto-map breaks down there (requiring external sources or personal handmade maps) and also because it has a lot of combat compacted into its tiny area. Which is odd because I believe that is the only dungeon in the game where I felt combat rate was too high (mostly prescripted so MORPETH doesn't help). The rest of the time I would say the combat rate is perfect.
Strangely enough, I completed the Pyramid really easy/fast without an FAQ and most people seem to think it's a apparently a tedious/long place. Shrug.
I know in the interview, the creators are like "OH, the last CHAOS area is unique because it has no combat and stuff and that's ORIGINAL!" but you know what, I think that's friggin lame. I like Uukrul because I feel it's a good mix of combat and puzzling for the most part. Ironically while a lot of RPGs have the flaw of becoming too combat-centric in the end and ignoring other content (cough Bloodlines), Uukrul just does the same thing in the end-game by being TOO puzzle centric instead. Same flaw, slight variant.
Combat stuff:
The decision to only allow 1 square movement, non-diagonal attacks/ranged attacks for melee classes and having all units do movement first THEN all attack at once is interesting. I think a lot of people don't like it but I think it adds this very "psychological warfare" nature to battles even if the AI is dumb. There's this tense feeling of trying to navigate your units into the perfect position, but then sometimes you realize that instead of implementating your brilliant Sun-Tzu strategy, all you did was leave your Magician flanked by 2 dudes and your fighters are at diagonals and you are like "FFFFFFF"
The non-diagonal decision is interesting. I think allowing diagonal attacks were considered an improvement in one of the Ultima games, but in this game I think it works because you can "block" off diagonal movement with your squishier characters and not be attacked by the enemy.
To be honest, I know a lot of people say that ToEE or Gold Box is really tactical, but this is one of my favourite battle system in a dungeon crawler, which I think is surprising because most people remember the puzzles apparently.
Class Ranking:
First things first, I always liked "question answering" character creation but to be honest, there's not really any interesting choices here. A lot of classes have "dead stats" which means you won't pick those choices in character creation. I would prefer it if choices which would do something worthless like give Piety to your Fighter would maybe give some consumables instead (e.g Question 1 results: STR/DEX/VIT/"Starts with 1 Fulminating Crystal") or maybe if there were slight variants to character abilities based off their subclasses.
Magician at top of heap:
Main source of damage, CONSISTENT (a really important word here) source of healing, buffs, debuffs, utility spells... has a huge pool of mana too and if you equip a mage hat, doesn't really have mana issues unless you blow your strongest spell all the time (which you shouldn't do)
Fighter and Paladin:
Personally I don't feel these two classes differentiate themselves from each other much so I'll rank them next to each other.
I find it frustrating that there are times where it seems like both these guys would constantly miss or deal terrible damage even if they hit, leaving you to have to plink away with your caster classes.
Still, at bare minimum even if they can't deal damage at all, these guys are your linebackers, they'll use their bodies to stop the enemies from getting to your squishes, and in a lot of tactical RPGs I never actually FELT that they could do that, but in this one, it's very obvious that they can.
So the Fighter's ability is insta-weapon swap but I think the Paladin does it too? I don't think I lost a turn when I swapped weapon in-battle with a Paladin anyway. Anyway this isn't as interesting as I thought it was because weapon stats are so vague.
The Paladin Lay on Hands is interesting. I don't think it's a very good healing tool unless you absolutely need to make sure someone doesn't die NOW. What's more interesting about it is that it allows the Paladin to "attack" diagonals, albeit in a luck-based fashion. This means the Fighter is the only class that can't attack diagonals.
Though I think the Fighter's raw stats beat out the Paladin's tactical options in efficency.
These two classes, I think are saved by how strong the inherent battle system is. I do wish they had more abilities though. No need for a big menu, maybe just 1 or 2 per subclass like...
1) Berserk
2) Cleave
3) Improved Healing Lay on Hands/Improved Drain Lay on Hands.
4) Flanking attack
5) 2 Tile Polearm/Spear attack.
One thing I like is that they're also allowed to use scrolls like everyone else. A lot of RPGs makes it so that they can't which I think is kind of dumb, because they're the classes that desperately need more options.
Also the whole "Oh they don't have resource management so they got to be weaker" thing is bullcrap. If your casters are out of juice, your fighters can't do jack either without support.
Priest:
Okay I know the interviewer said this guy is awesome in the end but I never felt it. His best use to me was to summon an Elemental in each fight once that stops failing all the time. Then I wonder what to cast because it feels he generally doesn't contribute much outside of Elementals.
He has a very limited amount of attack spells compared to the Magician which... really doesn't scale that well. It's strange because I always figured the Priest would trade versatility for power seeing as how his spell list is smaller but nope. Like I thought Ralkor would always hit a single target hard no matter where you are in the game but instead at the end of the game it does laughable damage. Sirdhe heals a TEENY amount of HP once you're like level 12. The priest becomes more consistent over time but wussier outside of elementals.
And I find it weird that they try to give the Priest self-buffs and ONLY self-buffs apparently (as opposed to the Magician's targeted buffs) but melee-ing with your priest isn't even a viable strategy because he's so squishy and can't wear the really good stuff. As far as I'm concerned, that makes his limited spell list EVEN smaller with junk spells.
I'm not counting out of battle utility spells for ranking. Obviously Priest would be a lot improved then.
Also I guess ranking the classes is a moot point since you can't exactly choose your party classes. Still.
Are there any other "first person Dungeon Crawlers with a tactical battle system (as opposed to blobber)"? The only other I can think of is Gold Box. Tactical Combat is just much more interesting than blob.
The correct order of steps is: east - east - north - south - west - north - east - east. Hopefully I got it right.
. The inscription tells you to go AVCLREY, but this is not the only way to solve this puzzle; you can do it in the complete reverse order , or you can go AVERLCY or YCLREVA (which was what I did).
) 
and can't edit my post 
