Review RPG Codex Review: Legends of Eisenwald

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

Surprising it is getting so favourable review here, I found the game pretty 'meh'. Especially in the story/lore department... just uninteresting to read, found myself skipping dialogue frequently, which I rarely do in other games.

Also, buggy as hell, right now I'm unable to finish the fight with the forest king, because it just crashes at random point during the combat. Every damn time.

 

[Aterdux Entertainment]

The bug with the Forest King was fixed a few patches ago.

 

[Gord]

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.

Well, german language is probably to other languages like oldskool rpgs to Fallout 3.
I guess you're happy now that you didn't use russian names :D

(I suspect that there are a few mistakes in some of your names, though, at least the translation is not right in some cases)

 

[Aterdux Entertainment]

Well, german language is probably to other languages like oldskool rpgs to Fallout 3.
I guess you're happy now that you didn't use russian names :D

(I suspect that there are a few mistakes in some of your names, though, at least the translation is not right in some cases)

German language is a part of the lore here

Translation was done by folks who translated Skyrim into German at least. So I really doubt there are mistakes there. And I lived in Germany for 6 years myself and speak decent German.

 

[Gord]

Translation was done by folks who translated Skyrim into German at least. So I really doubt there are mistakes there. And I lived in Germany for 6 years myself and speak decent German.

Well, I wondered about some names like Castle "Steingatte", which translated literally (from modern german at least) means "stone husband". From the description, I think you meant "Steingatter" ("stone gate"). There are one or two more I noticed, it's nothing serious though (and in that case might just be a typo).

Still haven't tried the actual german translation, I'm just talking about the names of some places and their (english) description.

 

[Aterdux Entertainment]

Aha, this one we missed indeed! I will make a note, thank you! If you find more, please let me know.

 

[sser]

Surprising it is getting so favourable review here, I found the game pretty 'meh'. Especially in the story/lore department... just uninteresting to read, found myself skipping dialogue frequently, which I rarely do in other games.

Also, buggy as hell, right now I'm unable to finish the fight with the forest king, because it just crashes at random point during the combat. Every damn time.

I actually thought I was quite critical.

 

[KyivAfter12am]

First game I ever played in Belarusian, and really enjoyed it. Good work!

 

[Aterdux Entertainment]

First game I ever played in Belarusian, and really enjoyed it. Good work!

Thank you! That's the first game oficially translated fully

 

[Emily]

You should prob have a little wikipedia in game for who is called what
I am having problems keeping track of characters as they are referred differently from time to time
For instance Chancellor is sometimes refereed as Chancellor and sometimes by his name.
And what would that landgrave title even be? Like a duke? I searched on wikipedia but it is not clear to me.

It is a bit mirky, which type of feudal system does your game uses btw i am curious. I see a lot of things that seem a bit odd, Like red brotherhood and merchant families having essentially a county under the Duke.
And how the hell can you take castles without any claim to them and even hold them later? It seems quite odd that such a thing is unjustified in game
Especially since a lot of scenarios are you having to take castles by yourself while having no land or claim



As for the game balance, mystic is way overpowered, he starts out very weak, but later on he is the strongest character hands down, he can solo entire armies, and combined with a strong melee unit he is insane. I am playing on ultra hard and i have no challenge anymore, he is too strong.

That said i am enjoying game a lot, definitely top game for this year, much better then Dicord times, and it has a soul, a true masterpiece. The amount of effort that you put into story and details is astonishing.

Oh and last question if you read all this, will there be expansion or something? And are you selling well? I am very hopeful you will make at least 2 expansions to this game.

 

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

I actually thought I was quite critical.

Maybe I have changed my standards for "critical" after reading Roxors review of POE. :D

 

[agentorange]

" I was often reminded of the Russian nobility’s stupidly naïve diaries in its final days. "

where can I read these?

 

[sser]

" I was often reminded of the Russian nobility’s stupidly naïve diaries in its final days. "

where can I read these?

Alexandra and a few of her daughters had diaries. You can find them on the interwebs or by Amazon. The tsarist was a little more fatalistic than her daughters, but still had moments of pomp. For example, her being rather upset at the "blackened ingratitude" that the servants and commoners were showing her husband in those final days/months/year.

 

[Gord]

And what would that landgrave title even be? Like a duke? I searched on wikipedia but it is not clear to me.

It's an historical title from the holy roman empire. He's above a count, roughly on par with a duke in terms of power and standing, but the historical origin is a bit complicated.

It is a bit mirky, which type of feudal system does your game uses btw i am curious. I see a lot of things that seem a bit odd, Like red brotherhood and merchant families having essentially a county under the Duke.
And how the hell can you take castles without any claim to them and even hold them later? It seems quite odd that such a thing is unjustified in game
Especially since a lot of scenarios are you having to take castles by yourself while having no land or claim

I think that's just concessions the game makes for the purpose of gameplay. It's definitely not 100% historical accuracy they are striving for.

 

[Aterdux Entertainment]

Here is the link to landgrave and on the right there is ranks table. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landgrave

We didn't strive for historical accuracy but wanted to portray Eisenwald as a duchy living under Holy Roman Empire laws.

 

[Aterdux Entertainment]

Oh and last question if you read all this, will there be expansion or something? And are you selling well? I am very hopeful you will make at least 2 expansions to this game.

The game is selling more or less OK but well below our expectations. We are still hoping for reviews to come and maybe it will change things a bit. But if not, big story driven expansions are unlikely. I love our game and very proud of what we have done but if the game won't sell there is no point working on it much. We have yet to pay off credits we took and debts we made. We will definitely do Way to the Iron Forest that we promised during Kickstarter campaign though. The rest - we will decide later about what we do and which direction we will take.

 

[Gord]

I hope you get a boost in sales once a few reviews are out, it's definitely worth playing if you like that genre of games.
Guess I'll drop the name in a few other forums.

 

[Aterdux Entertainment]

Thanks Gord for your kind words and help. I still believe our game will bring many good things. Hopefully it's like our Kickstarter campaign that also started really slow.

 

[Emily]

Oh and last question if you read all this, will there be expansion or something? And are you selling well? I am very hopeful you will make at least 2 expansions to this game.

The game is selling more or less OK but well below our expectations. We are still hoping for reviews to come and maybe it will change things a bit. But if not, big story driven expansions are unlikely. I love our game and very proud of what we have done but if the game won't sell there is no point working on it much. We have yet to pay off credits we took and debts we made. We will definitely do Way to the Iron Forest that we promised during Kickstarter campaign though. The rest - we will decide later about what we do and which direction we will take.

Damn, but i think you will have a high retention rate, meaning people who bought the game will probably buy the DLC as well, considering how good of an game you made

You could later on cash out with few easy to make DLCs, i am guessing it is much easier to make campaign then to program everything from the start.

 

[Aterdux Entertainment]

Damn, but i think you will have a high retention rate, meaning people who bought the game will probably buy the DLC as well, considering how good of an game you made
You could later on cash out with few easy to make DLCs, i am guessing it is much easier to make campaign then to program everything from the start.

You are probably right. But expansions and DLCs usually don't expand much your players base. So, while we will make a few things, I don't plan for any long campaigns. Localization, testing, scripting etc. take both a lot of time and money despite the fact we don't need to program anything else in the engine and in the game. A long campaign would be an option if we were close at least to break even. In a current situation any long campaigns we can't afford. For whatever reason the game is not selling enough, it's a clear message this kind of campaign is not what players want. We are good at other things too

 

[Gord]

Dunno about how many people are interested in that type of campaign, but your Kickstarter has been a while back and the EA took a while, too, so you probably flew of some people's radar.

Wouldn't hurt to have some publicity, I guess. If you do manage to work out a deal with GOG eventually, I could imagine that it would already help sales that you'd be placed on their main page for a while.

 

[Aterdux Entertainment]

That contributed to it too of course. Long time in development didn't help.

As for GOG, they don't seem to be very interested, emailed them last week, followed up today, didn't get any response yet.

 

[_V_]

http://af.gog.com/wishlist/games/legends_of_eisenwald?as=1649904300

 

[Eyestabber]

http://af.gog.com/wishlist/games/legends_of_eisenwald?as=1649904300

Thanks! Already upvoted.

 

[Deuce Traveler]

That contributed to it too of course. Long time in development didn't help.

As for GOG, they don't seem to be very interested, emailed them last week, followed up today, didn't get any response yet.

JudasIscariot