Review RPG Codex Review: Legends of Eisenwald

[Emily]

Aterdux Entertainment
Hey did you fix the issue in BETA where you got more experience leaving troops in castle then you did by adventuring?
I remember that one was game braking

EDIT : I played a lot of your earlier game btw. Discord times which i recommend everyone to try out, and i think was a great game.
You might want to make more people aware of its existence, i think it went unnoticed.

 

[worldsmith]

Looking forward to the next LoE review - hopefully it will cover strategic considerations as thoroughly as this one covered tactics.

Aterdux Entertainment, you might want to fix the grammar in this. The bolded words should be removed:

If there are a few fighters nearby, you can choose a one of them.

But our fighter can't attack the enemy C, because he is farther away than a A and B.

sser, I wasn't sure I was reading a codex review due to the apparent total lack of grammar errors...

Spoiler

...until I got near the end:

you get a nice little animated backdrops on which to read them

Other quests have to seeking out certain people

Spoiler

So, codex confirmed!

Spoiler

 

[Aterdux Entertainment]

Duh, get a few million dollars on ad avenue and your game will be the new Citizen Kane. It works for AAA publishers, you know, we all know how they make moving stories about batman breaking some criminal bones, I heard on the last batman there is a scene where batman gets in doubt if he should break the face of a thug or not and gone on a monologue "to hit" or "not to hit", it moved Polygon journalists so hard that they gave 10/10 on tears, it was quite emotional, some people are even talking that sequence will manage to make Batman Arkham Knight win the best written game of 2015 award from Fallout 4. Some Polygon journalist was so moved that he said not even if Bethesda kills that dog from the trailer it will manage to be more emotional, true story.

Few million dollars? You must be kidding. We barely got 80k on Kickstarter, remember?

I was able to play this game recently through the first territory and really enjoyed it, I will certainly be purchasing it once I have the free time.
Aterdux really should consider releasing a demo, however. $30 seems a bit of a steep cost to go in blind. Especially since the game is a lot more fun than it seems from just watching a video or screens.
edit: Duh - fantastic review, sser. Very readable and informative.

There are Steam refunds now. Don't like the game - return it. 2 hours is a plenty of time for a demo. I don't want to bother with a separate code base for the demo. If there were no refunds, I would consider making a demo. Now I see no point. Maybe later, when we more or less stop fixing things.

Aterdux Entertainment
Hey did you fix the issue in BETA where you got more experience leaving troops in castle then you did by adventuring?
I remember that one was game braking
EDIT : I played a lot of your earlier game btw. Discord times which i recommend everyone to try out, and i think was a great game.
You might want to make more people aware of its existence, i think it went unnoticed.

Troops still get experience in castles. However, they get more experience than in battles only if you play not smart. Enemies level up in castles too.

Discord Times doesn't work on most new machines (no win 8). Before making people aware it should be updated accordingly, which is not simple and needs a rewrite of the engine.

Looking forward to the next LoE review - hopefully it will cover strategic considerations as thoroughly as this one covered tactics.

Aterdux Entertainment, you might want to fix the grammar in this. The bolded words should be removed:

This is from the tutorial, right? Need to fix indeed.

 

[sser]

Castling bros for XP was a good addition. I used them as incubators for my noblemen since they start out so flimsy and shite.

 

[Aterdux Entertainment]

Castling bros for XP was a good addition. I used them as incubators for my noblemen since they start out so flimsy and shite.

It's a good mechanic that is useful sometimes, especially in the first time of playing. I use it really seldom since taking on stronger armies early on with less troops is so much more rewarding both in terms of XP and fun.

 

[Blaine]

Judging by the screenshots in the review, the Engrus translation is pretty awkward and spotty.

This is somewhat understandable, though, and it could be worse. I'll give the game a whirl at some point.

 

[Aterdux Entertainment]

Judging by the screenshots in the review, the Engrus translation is pretty awkward and spotty.

This is somewhat understandable, though, and it could be worse. I'll give the game a whirl at some point.

I think I said that we didn't translate it into English but rewrote? And it was done by the English speaking published writer. Actually, this is the first complaint after the release I hear about English, besides stupid bug in the Prologue.

 

[Blaine]

I think I said that we didn't translate it into English but rewrote? And it was done by the English speaking published writer. Actually, this is the first complaint after the release I hear about English, besides stupid bug in the Prologue.

A published writer, you say? Was he or she self-published, by any chance? Did you retain the services of a copy editor as well?

I'll offer some specific examples in order to (hopefully) provide you with some useful feedback, although awkward phrasing can be difficult to explain properly.

This is the name of a tavern, so it should be capitalized: "A Goose and a Fox".

In the above sentence, the galliards (dancers?) "don't avoid dropping by" and "will not let you spend your evening alone or sad." This is awkward phrasing.

If I were to rewrite it, I might rewrite it this way (there are many possibilities): "Couples dance the galliard here most evenings, entertaining and delighting all but the most dour of patrons."

This entire paragraph is awkwardly phrased, particularly with the addition of "ever" tacked onto the end as an incomplete sentence. That is an incredibly amateurish way to add emphasis to a statement.

I might rewrite it this way, although it's difficult to do while also adhering closely to the given paragraph structure: "I've nothing unkind to say of the Lahnsteins. They were well respected, even by their servants—I've never heard them spoken ill of, in public or in private!"

Come on, now. You misspelled the title of your own game at the beginning of the instruction manual.

These are just a few examples. There are many others. Typos and awkward writing aren't deal-breakers, but they do exist in your game.

 

[Ninjerk]

Aterdux Entertainment got swindled.

 

[Aterdux Entertainment]

They do exist in the game. We also had an editor. But - the game has about 250k words, hard to check everything. Some things are a style issue. So yes, there are issues but I can find similar ones in many bigger English games. That tradeswoman is a bit uneducated, what do you want from her?

Instruction manual is our bad, not his.

 

[worldsmith]

If I were to rewrite it

<<avoid games with writing by Blaine>>

I might rewrite it this way (there are many possibilities): "Couples dance the galliard here most evenings, entertaining and delighting all but the most dour of patrons."

I suppose if someone says "I wouldn't kick her out of my bed" you turn around and say that's awkward and they should have said "I would let her stay in my bed".

There was nothing awkward about the original version - it was written in a pleasing, flavorful fashion. And your version is total fail because it loses the intended nuance/slyness of the original (which apparently went over your head).

This entire paragraph is awkwardly phrased, particularly with the addition of "ever" tacked onto the end as an incomplete sentence. That is an incredibly amateurish way to add emphasis to a statement.

I'm sure in your RPG all of the bar wenches attend Oxford and speak perfect Queen's English. Sounds totally immersive.

Bar wenches speaking impromptu (and nervously) are not expected to adhere to overly strict rules of sentence construction, and the game text is merely echoing what this character said (and how they said it). The wench finished her sentence, and having done so wanted to expand it to cover all time. Unlike a writer, a wench doesn't get to go back in time and edit what already came out of her mouth. And only a bad writer would do so "on the wench's behalf" or to appease the overly sensitive sensibilities of some readers that are still stuck within the artificial walls created by their gradeschool English classes.

 

[Blaine]

It's awkwardly phrased and you are an idiot, whether or not you like my rewrites. As-is, the wench's dialog is a poor way to portray either a medieval peasant or a noble lord.

"Total fail," "clearly it went over your head," "b-but you missed the NUANCE"... you forgot to tip your fedora on your way back to Reddit.

 

[Ninjerk]

inb4 worldsmith is that writer

 

[nkbsteam]

i don't understand, your release isn't Full? i mean, i can play till the little entry of the Chapter 4 when i talk with a Stranger when the Undead march in front of us.

Then after some spirits talk me or else, i fall asleep etc.. and instead of keep playing the game show the CREDITS and .. that's all? really? ._. i tought i could play till Chapter 6.. or till the end x.x! so what should i do now? -_-

 

[sser]

I never really had an issue with the writing. It's effective enough and at times amusing. Of course, much of the amusement came from the dorky look on my Knight's face.

 

[Blaine]

I find it disturbing that so-so or spotty writing, even poor writing, is not only allowed to slide but very often defended here on the Codex.

There are usually extenuating circumstances, such as this particular game being developed by persons for whom English isn't a first language. In this case, though, the "published writer" and editor are clearly incompetent. Their work is far sloppier than what you'd find even in cut-rate English novels and nonfiction. If you disagree, then I have to wonder if you've ever read a book written in English.

Yes-men and fanboys who must meet any criticism with a barrage of furious, angry rebuttals should fuck off to RPGWatch or NeoGAF. Underrail is without a doubt my favorite RPG of the decade, perhaps even of all time, but the writing is sloppy and full of typos. I've never hesitated to point that out.

While awkward phrasing may be somewhat subjective, incomplete sentences, typos, lack of proper capitalization, and so on are not subjective, and the handful of screenshots in sser's review are stuffed full of them. I can only imagine how the entire game reads.

 

[HiddenX]

I find it disturbing that so-so or spotty writing, even poor writing, is not only allowed to slide but very often defended here on the Codex.

There are usually extenuating circumstances, such as this particular game being developed by persons for whom English isn't a first language. In this case, though, the "published writer" and editor are clearly incompetent. Their work is far sloppier than what you'd find even in cut-rate English novels and nonfiction. If you disagree, then I have to wonder if you've ever read a book written in English.

Yes-men and fanboys who must meet any criticism with a barrage of furious, angry rebuttals should fuck off to RPGWatch or NeoGAF. Underrail is without a doubt my favorite RPG of the decade, perhaps even of all time, but the writing is sloppy and full of typos. I've never hesitated to point that out.

While awkward phrasing may be somewhat subjective, incomplete sentences, typos, lack of proper capitalization, and so on are not subjective, and the handful of screenshots in sser's review are stuffed full of them. I can only imagine how the entire game reads.

Nitpicking characters should fuck off to GameBanshee...

 

[Infinitron]

Plus, it doesn't help that the game uses names like Grueninsel, Gipfelburg and Kohlsitz, which are probably like Smith and Jones in Belarus, but are more like alphabet soup for me, and hindered my ability to keep track of the story.

 

[worldsmith]

incomplete sentences ... are not subjective

What did I tell you about your gradeschool English rules? Let's see what kind of rubbish writers agree:

Incomplete sentences
Frequent user: H. L. Mencken
Example: "Ticket-sellers in the subway, breathing sweat in its gaseous form.... Farmers plowing sterile fields behind sad meditative horses, both suffering from the bites of insects....Grocery-clerks trying to make assignations with soapy servant girls...." from "Diligence," A Mencken Chrestomathy
Why it's okay: Shakespeare, Dickens, and just about every other classic author has used some form of an incomplete sentence, including the above-mentioned sentences beginning with a conjunction. There are plenty of reasons for doing this, such as creating a sense of alarm with onomatopoeias, or a sense of anxiety with a paragraph full of choppy fragments. Mencken's purpose was the latter.

I don't know about you, but I loved my Shakespeare classes. (You mean I get college credits for this? Awesome!) It never occurred to me that I should have been dissin' his sentence structure instead of enjoying the imagery and wordplay. And now that you've "shown me the light"? I think I will continue to decline to engage in such idiocy when I enjoy his works in the future. (BTW, I own a hard cover edition of his entire collected works and have read a large fraction of it. Your constant ad homs such as "have to wonder if you've ever read a book written in English" are pretty silly and not really helping your case.)

More on incomplete sentences here:

The idea stems from a confusion of the concepts of sentence completeness and textual coherence. Meaning in writing is conveyed across and between all the sentences and paragraphs of a whole text, so individual sentences don't have to map slavishly to complete thoughts.

There are lots of good reasons to opt sometimes for an 'incomplete' sentence (one that doesn't have the standard subject-verb-object pattern, say) - style, rhetoric, economy and clarity among them (there are two such incomplete sentences in the previous para, by the way).

'There is a widespread belief that [...] complete SENTENCES are signs of "complete", well-ordered THOUGHTS (and that incomplete, fragmentary sentences are signs of incomplete, disordered thoughts),' wrote linguist Arnold Zwicky on Language Log.

'The underpinning belief is that the superficial syntactic form of sentences is a direct reflection of the structure of the thoughts these sentences convey. This is a very silly idea.'

Language is about communicating, not about rules. When a rule gets in the way rather than helps, a good writer disregards the rule. (I used to work at a place with coding style rules. Rule #1 was "when doing so makes the code more readable, disregard the rules". Some places are smart enough to grok that rules are there to assist in communication, not subjugate it.)

furious, angry rebuttals

You don't seem to be aware that I am totally laughing my ass of at you as I type my response. (I considered using the icon in response to your earlier vacuous post and adding "The butthurt, it's so delicious!", but that just sounded soooo wrong.)

Also, you might want to pay attention to what people are not disagreeing with you about - e.g., name capitalization. I don't see the need for you to keep arguing a point that no one is arguing against, other than to try to make the rest of the writing "guilty by association" or some other such nonsense.

And if you do manage to see the true light about incomplete sentences, then feel free to respond the same way the bible ends - with the following incomplete sentence:

Amen.

 

[Aterdux Entertainment]

I love this sentence from Gamebanshee review:

It doesn't help that the game uses names like Grueninsel, Gipfelburg and Kohlsitz, which are probably like Smith and Jones in Belarus, but are more like alphabet soup for me, and hindered my ability to keep track of the story.

 

[Deuce Traveler]

Old school RPGs are hard. They, like, expect you to take notes and stuff. And where are the optional romance options?

 

[Aterdux Entertainment]

Ours is not that old school and not that hard, I think it's just the games in general got so easy now we qualify for real hardcore. Pity, in a way.

 

[GrimoireFTW]

WTF is with this first quest in the game they have you go after this gang, you find the location in the woods. Then im spending the next hour trying to walk into the woods... with a shit camera controls that you cant scroll.... im clicking all of the stupid map trying to get to this location.... click click click click.... finaly I find its some shitty little path behind a village you can barely see... 1st quest and I already feel like this game is trolling me... Im already over this game.... shit controls, shit camera, shit movement, shit game

 

[Zorba the Hutt]

already feel like this game is trolling me... Im already over this game

Name: GrimoireFTW

 

[Aterdux Entertainment]

The camera can be rotated holding the right mouse button.