Anomander Rake
Savant
- Joined
- May 4, 2017
- Messages
- 631
Background: I've played this game a few weeks ago and I had never heard of Aterdux Entertainment before. I read a few people in the Codex suggesting Legend of Eisenwald but I hadn't the time to take a look at it nor to the game (expansion?) Blood of November, so I'm a tabula rasa and, as such, I had no expectations.
Why did I play this? I was intrigued by the C&C approach they describe in the Steam's page, where good has to pay for being good in a harsh world where forgiving someone and acting as a decent being would make the player either irresponsible or its abnegation would climax in his eventual death.
No baroness? The baroness won't be integrated into the game. So no, don't worry about eventual dlc(s) and pif you are interested by this game, you can play it now.
Concept (spoiler free as possible). You are the bastard son of a very powerful noble, and being a bastard, you are despised and scorned by both nobility and peasants. Whole game uses this as the foundation of a simple concept, that of "Authority", a number you got in your screen (at the start of the game the number is 7) that you can improve or diminish according to how you behave into the game.
Authority is the measure of your power over everything that is around you (eg of authority: A noble says something to his squire, he will listen, a noble tells something to his soldiers, they will listen).
When you start a dialogue with someone, the game will actually tell you if, by answering, you are going to lose authority or gain it (or nor lose nor gain). So you've got a great power that you have to use responsibly, because:
> Giving in to the prayers of peasants, sacrificing nobles' interest, means losing authority (you have to imagine that a noble won't accept another noble coming in and ordering him what to do but he will comply given who you are).
> Peasants have the same expectation from you and will ask for crude things or actually your opinion into some matters, forcing a choice by you.
> There are times nobles will ask for your support and negating it means that you will lose authority.
> There are quite a few random encounters where you have to use authority.
My opinion (I'll try to be spoiler free). The concept of Authority is a great foundation and makes you curious about what's next, but once you've finished the game, you won't play it twice. This is for a couple of reasons:
> game itself, lays both its foundation and its ending into how much authority you have. So, you will be forced out of one ending unless you have the max authority possibile, basically forcing you to re-play the game unless you use Bastard 1.0. In that version, you could forego 3 or 4 points of authority to unlock the final ending, but the dialogue didn't reflect what you had done, so the authors removed this possibility, forcing you to play the harshest noble possible if you wish to unlock the ultimate authority ending.
But... replaying the game just for the final ending, without the game even changing in the slightest is not a great thing: you will have the same encounters, the same questions, the same fights. This may not be a complain for some of you, but, now that I think about it, it shows another flaw this game has. If you wish to unlock the three endings at once, you have just to play the harshest noble possible, while before you could play a Noble that did a few different (good) choices, but that in the great scheme of things didn't matter, adding to the sheer pessimism the game shows and conveys. But when you unlocked that ending it clearly showed it was an oversight, while it could have been a "bonus" ending that wasn't meant to be by the developers but that could have been added.
> the more you play, the more you start seeing flaws in the game itself. Not only from a technical standpoint, but also from a C&C perspective. Your choices seem to matter and they do, but only for the 'authority' meter. That's the problem that affects the game, you won't have special encounters because you acted in a certain way, nor special gift nor bonus nor harsh encounters. Nothing at all.
I wish to be a little spoilerish now to convey what I mean when I say that the C&C has a few problems. It isn't ultra spoilerish stuff but it's the message I've sent to the developers while talking to them:
Technical issues and QoL change that should be absolutely added.
> Equipment in your inventory is not sorted by price, so you have to lose time checking one by one the prices and then, comparing them (by moving the cursor, obviously) with the equipped stuff
> Playing at low resolution (1280x1024) gave me a few issues. I couldn't upgrade followers after a certain point.
> The followers you can get are totally random. I actually complained about this with the developer, because I think it is annoying that a random chance should decide which people you have. It shouldn't work like that, it should be up to the player how his party is composed, not up to the random chance. So if I want to use only one archer for my party, that's ok, or maybe I want only archers, or maybe I want only melee fighters and so on.
Developers do not agree.
> It's not clear which follower does best which job. For example, in my second\third playthrough I've found a special snowflake that did a shittons of dmg and I couldn't understand if it was a 'normal' follower or a 'hero' or a 'mercenary'.
> Some of the skills of the main player seem useless (e.g Taxation)
Conclusion. I would rate this game a 6. The issue with this game is that when you play it for the first time you may enjoy it, but when you've finished it you start to dissect it and realize its flaws. But at least it gave me 3 or 4 hours to relax (that's the duration of the game).
Why did I play this? I was intrigued by the C&C approach they describe in the Steam's page, where good has to pay for being good in a harsh world where forgiving someone and acting as a decent being would make the player either irresponsible or its abnegation would climax in his eventual death.
No baroness? The baroness won't be integrated into the game. So no, don't worry about eventual dlc(s) and pif you are interested by this game, you can play it now.
Concept (spoiler free as possible). You are the bastard son of a very powerful noble, and being a bastard, you are despised and scorned by both nobility and peasants. Whole game uses this as the foundation of a simple concept, that of "Authority", a number you got in your screen (at the start of the game the number is 7) that you can improve or diminish according to how you behave into the game.
Authority is the measure of your power over everything that is around you (eg of authority: A noble says something to his squire, he will listen, a noble tells something to his soldiers, they will listen).
When you start a dialogue with someone, the game will actually tell you if, by answering, you are going to lose authority or gain it (or nor lose nor gain). So you've got a great power that you have to use responsibly, because:
> Giving in to the prayers of peasants, sacrificing nobles' interest, means losing authority (you have to imagine that a noble won't accept another noble coming in and ordering him what to do but he will comply given who you are).
> Peasants have the same expectation from you and will ask for crude things or actually your opinion into some matters, forcing a choice by you.
> There are times nobles will ask for your support and negating it means that you will lose authority.
> There are quite a few random encounters where you have to use authority.
My opinion (I'll try to be spoiler free). The concept of Authority is a great foundation and makes you curious about what's next, but once you've finished the game, you won't play it twice. This is for a couple of reasons:
> game itself, lays both its foundation and its ending into how much authority you have. So, you will be forced out of one ending unless you have the max authority possibile, basically forcing you to re-play the game unless you use Bastard 1.0. In that version, you could forego 3 or 4 points of authority to unlock the final ending, but the dialogue didn't reflect what you had done, so the authors removed this possibility, forcing you to play the harshest noble possible if you wish to unlock the ultimate authority ending.
But... replaying the game just for the final ending, without the game even changing in the slightest is not a great thing: you will have the same encounters, the same questions, the same fights. This may not be a complain for some of you, but, now that I think about it, it shows another flaw this game has. If you wish to unlock the three endings at once, you have just to play the harshest noble possible, while before you could play a Noble that did a few different (good) choices, but that in the great scheme of things didn't matter, adding to the sheer pessimism the game shows and conveys. But when you unlocked that ending it clearly showed it was an oversight, while it could have been a "bonus" ending that wasn't meant to be by the developers but that could have been added.
> the more you play, the more you start seeing flaws in the game itself. Not only from a technical standpoint, but also from a C&C perspective. Your choices seem to matter and they do, but only for the 'authority' meter. That's the problem that affects the game, you won't have special encounters because you acted in a certain way, nor special gift nor bonus nor harsh encounters. Nothing at all.
I wish to be a little spoilerish now to convey what I mean when I say that the C&C has a few problems. It isn't ultra spoilerish stuff but it's the message I've sent to the developers while talking to them:
> I think another ending should be provided. Game’s too harsh when it comes to his pessimism but the message is not powerful as it could be. For example, making it impossible to reach the authority ending unless you have 37 is harsh, but such harshness would be appreciated way more if you gave the player more choices to reach such an ending + a way to achieve a neutral one or a positive one, or at least a way to have the player make more conscious choices.
Example: There are times where you get called Bastard, but you can’t express the anger a noble of bastard background would do. There is only a time in the beginning in the pier (Ploten) where you can make your authority be respected, but to be honest in this game you get called bastard so many times without consequences for the people or villages where it happens.
> There is even a noble knight that actually taunts you in the second\third worldspace, but killing him nets you no authority, nor you can sieze his lands or whatever. I would actually move the refugees in its lands while he is alive and make him stay alive, adding an option to kill everyone of his entourage but him, with no chance for him to escape but only to pray for salvation.
> If I remember correctly, you deny the player even the satisfaction to actually kill everyone when getting challenged, because you read that people fled\surrendered. So basically people surrender to you\flee after having attacked you but you can't choose their destiny.
> In snowfall, I can help a noble to actually promulgate a law that will actually change the whole land, but....
> I can’t kill\burn a whole village that actually attacked you. Or skin the peasants alive. Or their women. Or their kids.
Example: There are times where you get called Bastard, but you can’t express the anger a noble of bastard background would do. There is only a time in the beginning in the pier (Ploten) where you can make your authority be respected, but to be honest in this game you get called bastard so many times without consequences for the people or villages where it happens.
> There is even a noble knight that actually taunts you in the second\third worldspace, but killing him nets you no authority, nor you can sieze his lands or whatever. I would actually move the refugees in its lands while he is alive and make him stay alive, adding an option to kill everyone of his entourage but him, with no chance for him to escape but only to pray for salvation.
> If I remember correctly, you deny the player even the satisfaction to actually kill everyone when getting challenged, because you read that people fled\surrendered. So basically people surrender to you\flee after having attacked you but you can't choose their destiny.
> In snowfall, I can help a noble to actually promulgate a law that will actually change the whole land, but....
> I can’t kill\burn a whole village that actually attacked you. Or skin the peasants alive. Or their women. Or their kids.
Technical issues and QoL change that should be absolutely added.
> Equipment in your inventory is not sorted by price, so you have to lose time checking one by one the prices and then, comparing them (by moving the cursor, obviously) with the equipped stuff
> Playing at low resolution (1280x1024) gave me a few issues. I couldn't upgrade followers after a certain point.
> The followers you can get are totally random. I actually complained about this with the developer, because I think it is annoying that a random chance should decide which people you have. It shouldn't work like that, it should be up to the player how his party is composed, not up to the random chance. So if I want to use only one archer for my party, that's ok, or maybe I want only archers, or maybe I want only melee fighters and so on.
Developers do not agree.
> It's not clear which follower does best which job. For example, in my second\third playthrough I've found a special snowflake that did a shittons of dmg and I couldn't understand if it was a 'normal' follower or a 'hero' or a 'mercenary'.
> Some of the skills of the main player seem useless (e.g Taxation)
Conclusion. I would rate this game a 6. The issue with this game is that when you play it for the first time you may enjoy it, but when you've finished it you start to dissect it and realize its flaws. But at least it gave me 3 or 4 hours to relax (that's the duration of the game).
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