Damned Registrations
Furry Weeaboo Nazi Nihilist
- Joined
- Feb 24, 2007
- Messages
- 15,028
First up- context of how I was playing.
Settings were mostly default. I think I turned the difficulty up one notch?
I made a custom party. Actually, I failed to find the option for the custom party, so I made the quickstart, decided they looked like crap, and then made a party, realized some major flaws, and made another party after several hours. Still far from optimal but they now seem 'good enough.'
Playing blind. I hate being spoiled in exploration games, and have therefore avoided most comments/reviews about the game, aside from the occasional 'game is gud, go play it' reference.
Save scumming a lot. Frankly, it feels utterly necessary, given how easy it is to get a TPK from like, seeing just how deadly water is with low level characters, or encountering a boss for the first time. Or the green hand bandits before I even get to a town where I can buy equipment.
I've finished clearing out the first couple dungeons as best I can, killed the mummy, and have gotten through to the forest on the other side of Crowl. Killed the Jackalope too, but reloaded since the rewards seemed not worth the cost of like 6 resurrection charges. Still have a lot of Crowl to explore, but met some of the NPCs there.
So, opinion time---
The interface is crap. Text sizes, missing tooltips, really awkward to get basic info like weapon damage or change equipment or even just find a spell scroll I want. I get that it's doing the oldschool thing, but god damn do I ever hate it when I find a new weapon and have to click 37 times on half a dozen pages to just see which has a higher damage roll.
The combat is good. I was honestly surprised how well it works. The pacing is decent, there seem to be a ton of viable options, and it involves more thought the the really oldschool stuff where you just mash attacks and heal. Not knowing what enemies are weak to is frustrating, but feeds into that exploration reward my brain hungers for. I like realizing the Jackalope can be crippled with insect swarms, and some stuff is intuitive, like sonic screech vs bats. Other stuff less so, like pirahnas reflecting lightning back at me. But I'd still rather have it bounce back at me than just be a totally vanilla interaction. Details make things interesting.
The exploration is also good. I'd prefer a bit more openess, but I realize I'm still very early so it might open up a lot more in the near future. But where it really shines is the loot. It's randomized, which helps the replay value a ton, and it's actually rewarding! Like finding a chest is always exciting because it might give me new spells, or major equipment upgrades. None of that 'You find 36 gold and a pair of shoes that sell for 3 copper' crap. I also found an orb that gave a permanent stat buff, which makes me really want to find every last square on each map.
The character building aspect is a mixed bag. On the upside, it has a ton of options, and they're quite impactful. The casters have wildly different spells available, there are races with equipment restrictions, and there is huge variance in my team for things like mana regen rate, how many skill points are gained on level ups, and how effective they are at fighting. On the downside, balance is just thrown right out the window. My naga assassin does more damage by biting shit than the other 5 physical characters combined, which include 2 warriors, a metalmith, a ranger and a thief. The ranger does more damage clawing shit without ever having trained hand to hand (which isn't martial, making it something I don't want to invest in on someone with a bunch of utility skills) than he did with a shortbow and barbed arrows, like 45 points in archer and 15 in accuracy. Baffling. Weapons in general seem to have some weird hidden aspect that is throwing off my ability to minmax things there. The poison dagger says it does 2d4, but it consistantly fails to hit or penetrate compared to the hunting dagger which should be inferior. Something weird is going on with the multiple attacks thing too, as the main gauche I picked up rarely even fires on my thief with very high speed while my slow ass metalsmith regularly gets 2-3 hits with a bullwhip. I skimmed through the manual and there's a bit at the end about hit chance and penetration of attack types vs ranks, and I suspect this is responsible for why daggers and bows suck while claws, bites, lashes and sword thrusts are great. But there's clearly some hidden shit going on with the multi attack thing too, since my assassin does better when biting than he does with the power strikes in terms of number of attacks.
In regards to party composition and building, magic seems insanely good and I regret not having more casters. Mana can regen quickly with the correct race (the Aeorb seems like shit, the astral vision thing hasn't done anything yet and he can't recover mana for beans) and there are a ton of incredibly useful buffs that get exponentially better with more mana invested due to the way buff strength degrades over time, and even a 3rd level of bless is way stronger than all my armour combined. Also, utility magic like detect secret, true seeing, mind reading and others is just way too good. Wish I had another sage just to be able to spam all that shit more often. Also, some classes getting a ton of points in the utility/magic trees while others get basically nothing (my stupid Aeorb can only add 2 points per level to Astral vision) is another major source of imbalance. A better team that minmaxed skill points gained on levels, mana regen, and the better combat options would make the early game so, so much easier. Oh, and another huge variance is skill growth by doing. My naga is constantly gaining hand to hand, but my warrior just won't gain skills in shield or bladesmanship in combat. I assume it's related to their stats, but it's hard to tell whether I need more int, wis or dev, as my observations and the stat descriptions don't line up very well. Like I said, its a mixed bag. I like being rewarded for good play and that good play not being obvious, it's just frustrating to realize how bad the bad options really are and that they make up 90% of the design space.
The lockpicking minigames took a bit to figure out, but now that I understand them I think they're pretty good, if a bit abusable by restarting the attempt after a partial failure.
TLDR: I really like it, and intend to play a lot more. Will probably put that off for later though, as it's going to be a huge time sink, especially if I want to spend the time to figure out how to munchkinize my party.
Settings were mostly default. I think I turned the difficulty up one notch?
I made a custom party. Actually, I failed to find the option for the custom party, so I made the quickstart, decided they looked like crap, and then made a party, realized some major flaws, and made another party after several hours. Still far from optimal but they now seem 'good enough.'
Playing blind. I hate being spoiled in exploration games, and have therefore avoided most comments/reviews about the game, aside from the occasional 'game is gud, go play it' reference.
Save scumming a lot. Frankly, it feels utterly necessary, given how easy it is to get a TPK from like, seeing just how deadly water is with low level characters, or encountering a boss for the first time. Or the green hand bandits before I even get to a town where I can buy equipment.
I've finished clearing out the first couple dungeons as best I can, killed the mummy, and have gotten through to the forest on the other side of Crowl. Killed the Jackalope too, but reloaded since the rewards seemed not worth the cost of like 6 resurrection charges. Still have a lot of Crowl to explore, but met some of the NPCs there.
So, opinion time---
The interface is crap. Text sizes, missing tooltips, really awkward to get basic info like weapon damage or change equipment or even just find a spell scroll I want. I get that it's doing the oldschool thing, but god damn do I ever hate it when I find a new weapon and have to click 37 times on half a dozen pages to just see which has a higher damage roll.
The combat is good. I was honestly surprised how well it works. The pacing is decent, there seem to be a ton of viable options, and it involves more thought the the really oldschool stuff where you just mash attacks and heal. Not knowing what enemies are weak to is frustrating, but feeds into that exploration reward my brain hungers for. I like realizing the Jackalope can be crippled with insect swarms, and some stuff is intuitive, like sonic screech vs bats. Other stuff less so, like pirahnas reflecting lightning back at me. But I'd still rather have it bounce back at me than just be a totally vanilla interaction. Details make things interesting.
The exploration is also good. I'd prefer a bit more openess, but I realize I'm still very early so it might open up a lot more in the near future. But where it really shines is the loot. It's randomized, which helps the replay value a ton, and it's actually rewarding! Like finding a chest is always exciting because it might give me new spells, or major equipment upgrades. None of that 'You find 36 gold and a pair of shoes that sell for 3 copper' crap. I also found an orb that gave a permanent stat buff, which makes me really want to find every last square on each map.
The character building aspect is a mixed bag. On the upside, it has a ton of options, and they're quite impactful. The casters have wildly different spells available, there are races with equipment restrictions, and there is huge variance in my team for things like mana regen rate, how many skill points are gained on level ups, and how effective they are at fighting. On the downside, balance is just thrown right out the window. My naga assassin does more damage by biting shit than the other 5 physical characters combined, which include 2 warriors, a metalmith, a ranger and a thief. The ranger does more damage clawing shit without ever having trained hand to hand (which isn't martial, making it something I don't want to invest in on someone with a bunch of utility skills) than he did with a shortbow and barbed arrows, like 45 points in archer and 15 in accuracy. Baffling. Weapons in general seem to have some weird hidden aspect that is throwing off my ability to minmax things there. The poison dagger says it does 2d4, but it consistantly fails to hit or penetrate compared to the hunting dagger which should be inferior. Something weird is going on with the multiple attacks thing too, as the main gauche I picked up rarely even fires on my thief with very high speed while my slow ass metalsmith regularly gets 2-3 hits with a bullwhip. I skimmed through the manual and there's a bit at the end about hit chance and penetration of attack types vs ranks, and I suspect this is responsible for why daggers and bows suck while claws, bites, lashes and sword thrusts are great. But there's clearly some hidden shit going on with the multi attack thing too, since my assassin does better when biting than he does with the power strikes in terms of number of attacks.
In regards to party composition and building, magic seems insanely good and I regret not having more casters. Mana can regen quickly with the correct race (the Aeorb seems like shit, the astral vision thing hasn't done anything yet and he can't recover mana for beans) and there are a ton of incredibly useful buffs that get exponentially better with more mana invested due to the way buff strength degrades over time, and even a 3rd level of bless is way stronger than all my armour combined. Also, utility magic like detect secret, true seeing, mind reading and others is just way too good. Wish I had another sage just to be able to spam all that shit more often. Also, some classes getting a ton of points in the utility/magic trees while others get basically nothing (my stupid Aeorb can only add 2 points per level to Astral vision) is another major source of imbalance. A better team that minmaxed skill points gained on levels, mana regen, and the better combat options would make the early game so, so much easier. Oh, and another huge variance is skill growth by doing. My naga is constantly gaining hand to hand, but my warrior just won't gain skills in shield or bladesmanship in combat. I assume it's related to their stats, but it's hard to tell whether I need more int, wis or dev, as my observations and the stat descriptions don't line up very well. Like I said, its a mixed bag. I like being rewarded for good play and that good play not being obvious, it's just frustrating to realize how bad the bad options really are and that they make up 90% of the design space.
The lockpicking minigames took a bit to figure out, but now that I understand them I think they're pretty good, if a bit abusable by restarting the attempt after a partial failure.
TLDR: I really like it, and intend to play a lot more. Will probably put that off for later though, as it's going to be a huge time sink, especially if I want to spend the time to figure out how to munchkinize my party.
