KickStarter The Dwarves (Die Zwerge), a horde combat RPG from KING Art Games

[LESS T_T]

great. now they can work on Book of Unwritten Tales 3

Cough Iron Harvest Cough

they are making this? i dont see kingart logo anywhere

They are: http://www.kingart-games.com/blog/1478

 

[HoboForEternity]

i see. but at least they're trying different things

 

[rezaf]

Aww man, I was hoping for this to be a decent game.

The good:
-The graphics are okayish, even though the characters and their faces look odd, like they were made from modeling clay or something.
-Voice acting in german is very good. Pronouncations etc. seem to be based on the german audiobook, and it's all professionally realized.
-In some missions, especially early on, before everything got repetitive, combat can be fun, despite it's flaws.

The neutral:
-The story is basically that of the first book, and whether or not you can enjoy the story of the game depends on how you liked the book - provided you know it.
However, IF you know the book, they took some cheap shortcuts that leave a feeling of disappointment, if you don't know the book some things are explained badly (or not at all).
-The UI feels consoleish. It's in huge ass font, there are not many options in general and there's often a lack of information. I put this under neutral because some of you might like this, but for me, it was leaning towards bad.


The bad:
-Kinda like in Blackguards, the game is build around it's combat, with a thin layer of RPG/storytelling around. And combat is not very good. It's RTWP (for better or worse, depending on your views), but with some strange design choices. For example, there's too much "pushing around".
Your own characters running forward as well as certain attacks will push friend and foe aside - it's kinda hard to describe properly, but feels wrong, imo.
Some attacks/characters are almost useless, some almost mandatory. Archers (those of the enemy, you don't have any) are OP, especially in later missions. There's hordes and hordes of usually the same enemy (orcs) in every fight, and it quickly gets repetive.
Balancing is also way off, with occasional spikes in difficulty.
-The locations you visit are very very light on content, with a few hotspots to click and that's it. For example, in the great citadel of the dwarves, Ingrimmsch tells you not to get lost when you come out of throne room after a meeting with the high king and admire the dwarven architecture. From where you lead that conversation, you can go back to the throneroom, or into your room. That's it. Two passages leading off from the scene are blacked off by guards. Don't get lost!
-Some of the side missions are bugged and cannot be completed depending on the choices you make.

I liked the books. Sue me. But coming from that angle, it was nice seeing some of the things brought to life, but often disappointing realizing how much was cut or which cheap shortcuts used.
The story of how Tungil got his nickname Goldhand is quite the tale in the books - here it happens because somebody bumps into him during a conversation in his room. Not exactly epic.
I'd loved to have played a real RPG in this world, but this wasn't going to be like that - so much was clear from since the Kickstarter. But for a game centered around the combat, I feel the combat part isn't nearly strong enough.

 

[cruelio]

This game asks the question "what if Dynasty Warriors had cooldown combat?" Too bad no one wanted to ask that question, let alone wanted the answer.

 

[SirSingAlot]

also read that the character development isnt very deep and the game is shortish

can someone confirm?

 

[TOUGH GUY]

and the game is shortish

Well, it is a game about dwarves after all.

 

[Sneaky Seal]

Ah, man, I've always liked Dwarves both in LOTRO and FR, and being a tactical RPG this game seems to be right up my alley. It's a disappointment they did such a lazy job with it.

 

[sser]

also read that the character development isnt very deep and the game is shortish

can someone confirm?

Yeah.

 

[rezaf]

The numbers you read sometimes are greatly inflated. Six to eight hours? Maybe using the easiest combat setting (or cheating) and clicking away all dialog and comments instead of reading.
Otherwise I'd say about double this amount is realistic, so 12 to 16 hours if you're following the plot and are somewhat competent at the battles.
Note that I'm also assuming you play in a normal way - for example, if you get Rodario leveled up, you can win most battles without facing any danger. He can disguise himself as an enemy (so he won't get attacked) and has an attack skill himself that doesn't break this stealth. Given enough patience, you can clear entire maps using this technique. I tried it once for giggles, and this took maybe an hour or something alone.

If combat was enjoyable and the game had any semblance of replayability, I wouldn't hold it's length against it. As it stands, it's a bit of an issue, but fades in the face of the other, more serious ones.

As for character development, in terms of storytelling, there basically is none, and the character interactions from the books are cut criminally short.
In terms of RPG mechanics, there's a very small skill tree, where some characters can pick one of two skills on some level ups while others don't even get a choice (and others still even get no skills at all at some levels).
So yeah, not great.

 

[*-*/\--/\~]

It no stats to speak of (the only atribute your characters have is hitpoints) and no inventory/equipping stuff whatsoever (assigning one amulet to each character doesn't count, sorry) with very lite dialogue and interaction... where the hell is the RPG in this? ;x

 

[Ranarama]

The numbers you read sometimes are greatly inflated. Six to eight hours? Maybe using the easiest combat setting (or cheating) and clicking away all dialog and comments instead of reading.

Not my fault, sometimes the game skips dialogue accidentally. It seems overly sensitive (No way of going back short of reloading or a box with dialogue history btw.)

Steam reviews show around 9-12 hours.

It no stats to speak of (the only atribute your characters have is hitpoints) and no inventory/equipping stuff whatsoever (assigning one amulet to each character doesn't count, sorry) with very lite dialogue and interaction... where the hell is the RPG in this? ;x

Have to be careful equiping everyone, there are some encounters (and there do seem to be a limited number of different encounters) where you need to pick up an item and use that to destroy nests, and if everyone has an item already equipped? Well then you need to reload.

 

[Infinitron]

The Dwarves Reviews

KING Art Games' crowd-funded RPG The Dwarves has been consuming space on many a hard drive over the past couple of weeks, and since that has brought us a considerable number of critiques, it's time to round them all up in one place.

IGN gives it a 6.2/10:

The Dwarves boasts a strong story that's taken from a bestselling novel, and it generally honors that lineage with a cast of likable and ably voiced characters. It's a good foundation, but unfortunately it's not strong enough to make up for the deficiencies of its gameplay, which include unfulfilling RPG elements and a stubborn camera.

PlayStation Universe gives it a 6.5/10:

A strategy RPG that suffers from a distinct lack of technical polish and unsatisfying combat, The Dwarves superb orchestral soundtrack, intriguing narrative and charismatic cast almost make up for its technical deficiencies, lending hope that future instalments might improve upon what we see here.

GamePressure gives it a 6.0/10:

Admittedly, The Dwarves includes some original solutions and can be actually entertaining, but it is often laughter through tears – the joy of adventuring is sooner or later destroyed by broken combat or the awareness that there's very little to do in this virtual world. And even if the narrative or the characters would happen to captivate you, making up for all the mechanical shortcomings, after all is said and done you will be disappointed with how quickly the adventure comes to an end. You can take a chance by joining the expedition of The Dwarves if you ran out of really good RPGs... but wait at least until the price drops and the developers properly patch their work. At the moment, there are one hundred better ways to invest EUR 40 than buying The Dwarves.

DualShockers gives it a 6.5/10:

The Dwarves has a lot of potential. If it was made on a AAA budget, I believe it could have been one of the best games this year. But it wasn’t. I thoroughly enjoyed my 15 hours with it, but I’m also well aware of its numerous, easily identifiable, shortcomings. If you’re a dwarf connoisseur, then I can recommend this game. If you enjoy fantasy RPGs, and don’t mind tactical (though it’s hardly that) combat, then I can also recommend this game. But if you don’t particularly love either of these things, then The Dwarves from KING Art Games, may not be the dwarves for you.

WCCFTech gives it a 6.3/10:

The Dwarves is a role-playing game that fails to reach its full potential. Its interesting battle concepts are marred by a mediocre execution, very limited RPG mechanics, and just too many technical issues on PlayStation 4. Despite this, the game still managed to be somewhat enjoyable thanks to the gripping yet not too original story, and charming characters. Due to gameplay and technical shortcomings, however, only die hard high fantasy fans may find some enjoyment in The Dwarves. Everyone else would do better in looking elsewhere.

The Sixth Axis gives it a 5/10:

There’s a lot of love that went into the creation of The Dwarves but the glimmers of brilliance are dulled by the numerous problems with the combat, as well as the conflicting nature of the narrative with the few moments where you are able to make your own choices. Chances are those who will enjoy this game the most are fans of the books, but it’s a largely forgettable game for everyone else.

Gaming Bolt gives it a 6.0/10:

Overall The Dwarves is a game that needed some extra development time. With another six months of development, a better battle system, more effective powers and abilities, and much less glitches, this could have been very enjoyable. But it wasn’t. If you’re just interested in the story then start the game on easy and make your way through a game with a great voice cast, and wonderfully epic music.

GameWatcher gives it a 7.0/10:

For $40, I feel like THQ Nordic might have an idea on their hands. If there was to be an integrated loot system, updates to the movement system, and general bug tweaks, I would be open to playing the game more. I love single player games and was really excited to try this out. However, I feel a little underwhelmed. It’s fun, and it has opportunity, but right now I feel like I was left with a half empty plate.

Zombie Chimp gives it a 78%:

Overall The Dwarves is a solid game full of great gameplay and a fun adventure. It lacks the polish of AAA games but is consistently strong across all aspect of the game. The Dwarves really could mark the start of middle tier games making a strong return to gaming libraries across the world.

Expansive DLC gives it a 6.5/10:

It has a very compelling story, there’s some great ideas in here, and it’s beardiful to look at and listen to, but the PC build, at least, needs a lot of work before it can reach its full potential.

PlayStation LifeStyle gives it a 4.5/10:

Almost everything from The Dwarves‘ gameplay to the presentation seems unpolished. It’s a real shame, since there are some good ideas, and the book it’s based upon is ripe for a video game adaptation. The mission objectives are far too rigid, the controls too cumbersome, and ultimately it’s a game that constantly gets in the way of itself. Every moment of enjoyment was quickly followed by bouts of annoyance, and this title clearly needed more time in development.

God is a Geek gives it a 4.0/10:

And that’s the biggest issue here: it’s not fun. There are too many problems, too many bugs, too many pointless ideas and faults that feel like omissions. The combat is implemented so badly that it feels almost amateurish, and the sloppy execution of almost everything else compounds the problem and makes The Dwarves hard to recommend even to fans of the genre.

Blot Gaming gives it an 8.1/10:

The Dwarves is an interesting RPG and strategy game. It focuses mostly on the strategy portion of it, with a few sprinklings of RPG here and there. Those who simply look for cruisey story-based games may want to give this one a miss. While the story is brilliant, with fantastic dialogue, plots and twists, the difficulty of the game, even on easy mode is something which a lot of players would not be looking for. But for those players out there who enjoy a good challenge and some fantastic fantasy action and stories, then The Dwarves has what you are looking for.

And True Achievements gives it a 3.5/5:

The Dwarves is a game that has a heavy focus on its strong story. Thanks to being taken from a bestselling novel, it doesn't disappoint in this aspect; of course, being backed up by likeable and well-voiced characters doesn't hurt either. Unfortunately, it is still not problem free even after a patch. Underwhelming RPG elements and character customisation, poor loading times and a map screen that now seems to have a mind of its own do hold back the game from being something great. Those with a penchant for a tightly woven narrative and tactical thinking will enjoy the experience, but it is difficult to overlook some of the more glaringly obvious problems.

 

[Mark Richard]

The Dwarves is starting to sound like Hard West, a game with RPG lite elements that had less meat on them than a chicken mcnugget.

 

[prodigydancer]

The Dwarves Reviews

This game is going to be such a disappointment.

 

[Infinitron]

You have to have expectations to be disappointed, no?

 

[prodigydancer]

You have to have expectations to be disappointed, no?

Well, professional reviewers aren't happy with the game.

I wonder what their backers think but with no official forum and only a handful of post-release comments on KS it's difficult to tell. So probably you're right: (almost) nobody cares.

 

[Infinitron]

http://www.pcgamer.com/the-dwarves-review/

THE DWARVES REVIEW

The Dwarves, a new realtime tactical RPG based on Markus Heitz’s German fantasy novel series of the same name, is an uneasy adaptation. As an RPG, Dwarves wants you to make choices to explore the world of its characters, but as a slavish recreation of a well-known book, it is constantly taking choices away from you. It’s a novel stuffed into an ill-fitting RPG suit, straining at seams held together by threadbare patches of tactical combat.

There are a few different problems going on here, but if I smelt it right down to the base ore, The Dwarves has two main failings: its RPG doesn’t give you any freedom to make choices or grow, and its combat is spammy, tiresome, and not very fun.

Brittle steel
Only a few minutes into my adventure—playing as Tungdil Goldhand, the young dwarf on a quest—I came across the first of many times that the plot of Heitz’s novel stomps on my fun. I’m travelling across an overhead map in the style of a board game, with pieces moving along a gridwork of paths and roads. At each grid intersection, a chance encounter, town, or event pops up.

On this occasion, the encounter window tells me I’ve found an abandoned camp and fire ring. Do I want to start a fire and bed down, or should I be extra cautious and climb into a tree? Not seeing any reason why I should be paranoid enough to sleep in a damn tree, I sack out. The next window informs me that an orc stabbed me in my sleep, and I am now dead. No ceremony, no preamble. Dead dwarf, game over.

I had to load my most recent save because, according to a friend who has read the series, Tungdil sleeps in the tree in the book. It may be faithful to the source material, but if I played D&D with a DM who concluded a short introduction with “...and a piano drops on you and you die; let’s start again,” I would not hang around that game for very long.

After reloading and sleeping in the tree, Tungdil wakes up to see an orc warband (surprise!) set up camp below him. After they leave, an encounter window gives me my options: climb down, or wait up in the tree to make sure the coast is clear. Well, you don’t have to stab this dwarf in the gut more than once to teach him some caution, so I wait in the tree. Nothing happens, says the encounter window. Do I want to wait some more?

I chose the option to wait in the tree a dozen times, waiting for something to happen. Nothing ever does; the plot didn’t move on until I climbed down. These false choices are everywhere: maybe saying hello to a traveling caravan will give me an opportunity to buy some supplies; maybe meeting a character in that caravan is absolutely critical, and walking past it is game over. An RPG is a game about choices, yes, but Dwarves is a game in which some choices are meaningless and some choices are momentous, and there’s no telling which is which. I found myself quick-saving every few minutes.

For being so devoted to the plot of the book, sadly, this is a rendition of The Dwarves that did absolutely nothing for me as an introduction to this world. Names washed over me, signifying nothing, as though I was making introductions at a friend’s family reunion: Vraccas, Tion, Girdlegard, Boёndal, Älfar. A narrator delivers some pretty talented voice work, including what sound like direct dialog quotes from the book, but not being able to understand the references pulled me out of the game. The whole story wraps up in about 11 hours, reminding me again and again that I was playing a Wikipedia-level summary of a much more interesting story.

Shorted out
When Tungdil isn’t clicking around, exploring this and that and getting quests to here and there, The Dwarves spends a lot of time in combat. It’s a standard party-based tactical RPG set-up: overhead camera, pause at any time, give orders, deploy special skill attacks set to cool-down timers. This design is serviceable in a lot of other games, but it stumbles badly here.

The members of your party automatically attack the nearest enemy and pound them steadily with a basic attack until you give an order to use a special skill, which is actually pretty nice to see. Unfortunately, the basic attacks are useless, so the special skill attacks do all the heavy lifting. After some trial and error, I discovered that using basic strategy and smart party placement isn’t nearly as important as making sure that all of your fighters use as many of their special attacks as often as possible. The best way to make it through a tough fight is to pause often, switch characters constantly, and throw around those special attacks the instant their timers expire.

If any party characters die, that’s game over (because the characters have to participate in the plot, of course), so it’s a real pain in the leather that there are very few ways to heal during a fight. This made difficulty spikes a real issue for me. Even on the easiest difficulty, I came up against several seemingly impossible battles, randomly placed before or after another fight that I found effortless. My success or failure depended entirely on how many bad guys level designers decided to spawn for that battle. If they added too few, I had an easy time. If they added too many, I had a horrific grind.

It’s at this point that I would spend some character points beefing up that basic attack or spend some gold improving my gear, but Dwarves doesn’t have even those basic RPG elements. There are a few inventory items, like enchanted pendants and such, but no way to upgrade armor or loot new weapons. The only way to grow a character is by advancing along a very simple, one-path skill tree (skill stick? skill line?) with half a dozen special moves to unlock.

After all the whining I’ve just done about this poor, battered game, it hardly seems worth mentioning, but: I had a lot of technical issues with The Dwarves, too. I only crashed to desktop once, thankfully, but there were other problems. My frame rate plummeted in every battle when a lot of enemies showed up, and moving around the map interface brought on screen tears and texture-pops. In combat, the camera is a real nuisance; I paused to find a camera angle free of tree branches and terrain almost as often as I paused to give combat orders. On one occasion, a corrupted saved game loaded to show a permanently frozen, motionless dwarf in the foothills around Blacksaddle. I returned to a previous save and started again.

Between the rocky difficulty curves, the linear progression, the forced petty choices, and insta-death penalty for veering away from the dictated plot—everything in The Dwarves made me feel like I had no real control over my journey across Girdlegard. I lacked any real agency as a player, and even for a short RPG adventure, that sucks. I wanted to go on a journey, but I ended up just watching a pretty good book as read by someone else.

THE VERDICT
45

THE DWARVES
An unsatisfying, forced march through the source material.

 

[Turjan]

I had originally backed this, but decided to pull out before the Kickstarter ended. It looks as if this was the right decision.

 

[Doktor Best]

To be honest, i knew it was gonna be shit when i saw the first kickstarter video.

 

[Infinitron]

 

[Infinitron]

Codex review by sser: http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/index.php?threads/rpg-codex-review-the-dwarves.112650/

 

[vonAchdorf]

Already 40% off on Steam, doesn't look like it was very successful.

 

[thesheeep]

Already 40% off on Steam, doesn't look like it was very successful.

According to Steamspy...

Owners: 23,590 ± 4,282

Not sure what the budget was, but I doubt those can be considered big numbers.

 

[vonAchdorf]

They got 300k from 6,000 backers on Kickstarter. Looks like a huge failure outside a small core audience which joined because of the books.

 

[thesheeep]

Ah, I didn't even remember this was a KS game.
Well, in that case things should look less dire for them IMO.