KickStarter StarCrawlers - indie sci-fi dungeon crawling RPG

[Grampy_Bone]

On Topic - I got the game, seems cool. It still feels like I'm still in the tutorial period, nothing has been remotely challenging yet.

I went Ninja, Soldier, Force Psyker. It seemed clear that tank/aggro management would be important and I didn't see any healer classes. What's another good class to balance out this team? I'm thinking Smuggler or Void Psyker, but the former seems like it may end up too weak and the latter too gimmicky.

I'm liking the free-look and level design mechanics, letting you scour the environment for items and secrets. The mission-based design is also interesting, don't see that often in these games. Are missions infinite or is there a fixed number? Can you grind up before doing story missions or is it pretty linear?

The combat shows promise but I'm disliking yet another game with "Three different but balanced skill trees" character building. Even worse, it's one of those systems which requires maximum point investment to unlock new abilities, so you really can't dabble or experiment. I feel like respec options are an acknowledgement that these systems are inherently broken. They know its a bad way to design a game but instead of doing something else they just give you a built-in cheat to get around it.

Oh well, I'll play this some more once I'm done with my current Wiz8 playthrough.

 

[mindfields]

I tried playing this for some hours yesterday and I found it very boring, it's just the same dungeons over and over again, using the same abilities every fight (I don't mind repetition, but only if the combat is good). Everything is cooldown locked so you just use whatever abilities isn't on cooldown, each class only has like 5 abilities, thers's no attributes, no races, no real (non-combat) skill system, the itemization is bad, the artstyle is mediocre, it's full of ironic indie "humor", the procedural generation has problems (I keep getting ladders which led down to into a wall/dead end), and the game is very easy even on "hardcore".

 

[Sykar]

On Topic - I got the game, seems cool. It still feels like I'm still in the tutorial period, nothing has been remotely challenging yet.

I went Ninja, Soldier, Force Psyker. It seemed clear that tank/aggro management would be important and I didn't see any healer classes. What's another good class to balance out this team? I'm thinking Smuggler or Void Psyker, but the former seems like it may end up too weak and the latter too gimmicky.

I'm liking the free-look and level design mechanics, letting you scour the environment for items and secrets. The mission-based design is also interesting, don't see that often in these games. Are missions infinite or is there a fixed number? Can you grind up before doing story missions or is it pretty linear?

The combat shows promise but I'm disliking yet another game with "Three different but balanced skill trees" character building. Even worse, it's one of those systems which requires maximum point investment to unlock new abilities, so you really can't dabble or experiment. I feel like respec options are an acknowledgement that these systems are inherently broken. They know its a bad way to design a game but instead of doing something else they just give you a built-in cheat to get around it.

Oh well, I'll play this some more once I'm done with my current Wiz8 playthrough.

You could consider Hacker.

 

[lukaszek]

deterministic system > RNG

 

[bataille]

On Topic - I got the game, seems cool. It still feels like I'm still in the tutorial period, nothing has been remotely challenging yet.

I went Ninja, Soldier, Force Psyker. It seemed clear that tank/aggro management would be important and I didn't see any healer classes. What's another good class to balance out this team? I'm thinking Smuggler or Void Psyker, but the former seems like it may end up too weak and the latter too gimmicky.

I'm liking the free-look and level design mechanics, letting you scour the environment for items and secrets. The mission-based design is also interesting, don't see that often in these games. Are missions infinite or is there a fixed number? Can you grind up before doing story missions or is it pretty linear?

The combat shows promise but I'm disliking yet another game with "Three different but balanced skill trees" character building. Even worse, it's one of those systems which requires maximum point investment to unlock new abilities, so you really can't dabble or experiment. I feel like respec options are an acknowledgement that these systems are inherently broken. They know its a bad way to design a game but instead of doing something else they just give you a built-in cheat to get around it.

Oh well, I'll play this some more once I'm done with my current Wiz8 playthrough.

Read through all the skills and try and figure out how to synergize them. For example, my tactic is to spread the logic bomb virus (100% damage to adjacent enemies when critically hit; and chance to instantly kill; updates on its own crits) via shareware (which spreads viruses when they update; I think you can see where this is going). After that my void psyker and soldier, who I've specialized to crit with a lot of attacks, set the viruses off in a spectacular fireworks that, if lucky, can cause damage in many many thousands (and then you use kill switch for many many thousands more). Things like shadowcoil (attacks three times per enemy present, which I use with a 30% crit sword and barely any real damage) and overwatch (reaction fire with +20% crits to rifle fire) seem to be designed to strengthen such a playstyle.
I'm more than sure that you can come up with a ton of similar techniques.

 

[Sykar]

still experience same difficulty spike. This time however I managed to grab mission objective and run away. Barely. Hacker didnt make it, also triggered alarm twice while disabling systems in exploration mode... I thought that maxing left path is supposed to help with it?

I just do not get it. I have restarted 4 times by now to try out different party compositions but usually played until level 5-7 and first mild spike came around level 5 but it is not like I get utterly destroyed. Yeah sometimes I got away pretty low HP and had to use a medkit or two but nothing was so difficult that I would call it a spike.

I play on highest difficulty by the way so I doubt that is the problem.

 

[lukaszek]

deterministic system > RNG

 

[bataille]

Just some screenshots of a late-game (27 level) monstrosity for those who don't play and might want to see it (I just find the game's models to be fascinating and super cool to look at, so knock yourself out).

Spoiler

 

[Grampy_Bone]

Well, thought I would play a littler more... ended up playing until 2 am. Game is addictive.

I tried out smuggler, hacker, and the Prototype; Hacker seemed the most useful, especially for the lockpicking ability. Smuggler was pretty limited and Prototype seemed okay but he got critical error statuses and needed to be repaired after missions, which I found annoying.

I had my Solider specced to Tactician but that was redundant with Force Psyker so I changed him to Demolitions; now he explodes everything. Kinda funny setting things on fire with rockets and then the Cyberninja spin-kicks the fire to all enemies, and the fire damage over time procs the ninja's combo points and skills, and the soldier gets a bunch of bonuses from this.

Not sure how to manage the reputation system; seems like every mission I gain 5 rep with one faction and lose 50 with another. At this rate everyone is going to hate me. So many ways to lose rep and too few ways to gain it.

I sided with Horizon after the first real mission because they seemed to pay the best, we'll see how that goes.

 

[bataille]

Concerning reputations: this may be a bit spoilery, but after a certain event triggers, all those corps will be

Spoiler

divided into two major factions, so it's going to become much more manageable since the corps of one faction won't sabotage each other.

In other news, new game+ seems to be a complete mess: reputations don't reset (the game explicitly states that they should), and something strange and wonky happens with difficulty. Waiting for patches, I guess.

 

[sser]

Solid game, but damn is it grindy. I kind of want to restart on a harder difficulty, but it's taken pretty decently long just to get where I'm at now (lvl10ish with squad). Characters are interesting, though some (Hackers/Eldrich) seem incredibly overpowered compared to others. And the Sci-Fi Paladin's shield generations make mission progression way too easy.

 

[Zombra]

I kind of want to restart on a harder difficulty

What difficulty would you recommend for an "average Codexer" who also doesn't want to start over?

 

[sser]

I kind of want to restart on a harder difficulty

What difficulty would you recommend for an "average Codexer" who also doesn't want to start over?

2nd Hardest. That's actually usually what I go for, not sure why I didn't switch it on this one.

 

[Zetor]

Yea, I'm playing on 2nd hardest (Challenging) and it's been pretty fun, albeit grindy -- mostly because you have to do at least one proc-gen mission between story missions, and they are essentially just a bunch of not-particularly-difficult fights that can drag on forever even when selecting 'faster enemy animations'. The proc-gen missions are just not interesting even they throw a surprise boss at you -- actually let me rephrase that, they CAN become fairly difficult if you take on orange/red level ones, but the actual dungeon crawling part will still be pretty dull. (I'm preparing to do the story mission after the waste disposal thing now, fwiw)

And yea, void psykers + hackers are crazy. I'm finally picking up enough points to branch out fairly deep into a second tree, and holy crap, Void Psyker invoker tree just straight up murders shit doing an order of magnitude more damage than anything else. Hacker malware virus interactions also explode AOE dot damage over everything, which can sometimes end an encounter in 2 turns (I think bataille posted about this earlier)... they're both pretty jarring when compared to the overall slower pace attrition-based nature of the game.

 

[Reapa]

ironmode doesn't seem to delete the last save....
be me at level 1 and 1 party member, do cakewalk mission, die to groups of three bots with stun and chemical dmg with 0 flee chance... probably should have used the 200 credits to buy more chars instead of rare armor but seriously... cakewalk mission.... not sure how they label the missions if cakewalk has groups of three bots with stun and chemical weapons. and another thing. i'm used to see my enemies ahead of time in dungeon crawlers and decide whether i want to fight them or not based on how strong they seem from a distance. they way this games just puts them behind a door you have no chance to avoid encounters and when you do see an enemy 2 steps in front of you, you don't know how big the enemy group is

 

[Nekot-The-Brave]

ironmode doesn't seem to delete the last save....
be me at level 1 and 1 party member, do cakewalk mission, die to groups of three bots with stun and chemical dmg with 0 flee chance... probably should have used the 200 credits to buy more chars instead of rare armor but seriously... cakewalk mission.... not sure how they label the missions if cakewalk has groups of three bots with stun and chemical weapons. and another thing. i'm used to see my enemies ahead of time in dungeon crawlers and decide whether i want to fight them or not based on how strong they seem from a distance. they way this games just puts them behind a door you have no chance to avoid encounters and when you do see an enemy 2 steps in front of you, you don't know how big the enemy group is

This is not the grimoire you're looking for.

 

[Haplo]

and another thing. i'm used to see my enemies ahead of time in dungeon crawlers and decide whether i want to fight them or not based on how strong they seem from a distance. they way this games just puts them behind a door you have no chance to avoid encounters and when you do see an enemy 2 steps in front of you, you don't know how big the enemy group is

Eh, that you first Wizardry-style game?

 

[Reapa]

and another thing. i'm used to see my enemies ahead of time in dungeon crawlers and decide whether i want to fight them or not based on how strong they seem from a distance. they way this games just puts them behind a door you have no chance to avoid encounters and when you do see an enemy 2 steps in front of you, you don't know how big the enemy group is

Eh, that you first Wizardry-style game?

could be, what's your point?
i mean, i really haven't played a lot of wizardry except wizardry 8 and certainly no jrpg wizardy clones but i played quite a few dungeon crawlers and roguelikes and having some weird eye defect that lets you see only one enemy instead of 2 or 3 doesn't seem worth defending.
again, what's your point?

 

[V_K]

i really haven't played a lot of wizardry except wizardry 8

It's the only Wiz where you can see enemies in advance, in all previous games they just pop out of nowhere. Just as they do in Bard's Tale, Goldboxes, RoA, DHoU and many others. It's a really weird thing to complain about in a blobbler/crawler.

 

[Reapa]

anyone able to tell me why the bard doesn't use musical instruments instead of weapons (read hacker infecting enemies with a fucking smg) and the mages staffs instead of pistols (void fucking damage based on bullet size )? this feels like the same crap diablo 3 did, where every class could wield every weapon and all damage was based on weapon alone and made no fucking sense what so ever. exept with diablo 3 the demon hunter was the only one who could use crossbows. and i believe even diablo 3 had some sort of wands for the wizards.

 

[Reapa]

i really haven't played a lot of wizardry except wizardry 8

It's the only Wiz where you can see enemies in advance, in all previous games they just pop out of nowhere. Just as they do in Bard's Tale, Goldboxes, RoA, DHoU and many others. It's a really weird thing to complain about in a blobbler/crawler.

still doesn't explain how you see one enemy instead of three. maybe i've been spoiled by games that make sense. and there's plenty of roguelikes/dungeon crawlers that offer more information about an enemy right in front of you. i know the last few 3d blobbers to come out were a bit smarter. mmx, heroes of a broken land, demise, legend of grimrock 1/2, stonekeep.

 

[bataille]

On the matter of levels: you don't need to do side missions once you get all the slots filled with the skills you want. The more high level missions you do, the more likely you to become stronger (through the spawned items). Once you max out your skills (around level 15ish?), you might want to start tackling some 'EXTREME" labeled missions (level ups just give you 30 hp by that point, so it's nothing crazy).
Just be ready to somehow counter the enemies that deal hundreds of points of damage.

Also, concerning the exploding viruses, if you don't have a force psyker that just recasts shielding prisms over and over, you'd probably need that insane damage to finish the game (the final boss has around 100k hp in its first form). Admittedly, though, I killed it at level 25, so maybe it really is overkill if you have appropriate gear (probably is).

Maybe I'll play some NG+ on hardcore today, might be interesting to finally see legendary items.

 

[bataille]

This looks like a completely suitable challenge for a new game+, hardcore, 33 level mission.

Spoiler

Follow-up:

I honestly have no idea what's going on. But I could use that 900 damage, 30% crit shotgun to kill bosses with 2k health even harder, I guess.

Spoiler

 

[Zetor]

On the matter of levels: you don't need to do side missions once you get all the slots filled with the skills you want. The more high level missions you do, the more likely you to become stronger (through the spawned items). Once you max out your skills (around level 15ish?), you might want to start tackling some 'EXTREME" labeled missions (level ups just give you 30 hp by that point, so it's nothing crazy).
Just be ready to somehow counter the enemies that deal hundreds of points of damage.

Also, concerning the exploding viruses, if you don't have a force psyker that just recasts shielding prisms over and over, you'd probably need that insane damage to finish the game (the final boss has around 100k hp in its first form). Admittedly, though, I killed it at level 25, so maybe it really is overkill if you have appropriate gear (probably is).

Maybe I'll play some NG+ on hardcore today, might be interesting to finally see legendary items.

More than anything, that sounds like an artifact of broken builds / classes in the game, imo. After doing some respec trials, going for control abilities (stun, confuse, charm) and wasting turns on setting up some moderate burst damage just feels remarkably useless when compared to (ab)use of the best damage builds from the same classes to blow everything up in a few turns -- the best crowd control is making sure the entire crowd is dead, after all. Some sustain is necessary, but at least hacker and void psyker have easy access to regen. Prototype also gives aoe regen via haiku in the first turn, which is actually pretty good uptime considering most trash encounters should be over relatively quickly. If you play with one, the (possibly OP?) shielding from force psykers may be enough to ignore enemy offense entirely.

Random aside: charm/confuse cease to be useful past the early and mid-game (except for trash mobs, but nobody cares about those). Even though some bosses and their "adds" are susceptible, they'll just execute scripted attack patterns on the party, basically ignoring the charmed / confused status. Stun and taunt work somewhat better, but the hacker stun is easy to pick up even if going for the blow-everything-up malware build.

 

[Zombra]

maybe i've been spoiled by games that make sense. and there's plenty of roguelikes/dungeon crawlers that offer more information about an enemy right in front of you. i know the last few 3d blobbers to come out were a bit smarter. mmx, heroes of a broken land, demise, legend of grimrock 1/2, stonekeep.

Yeah. "That's just how it is in these games" doesn't cut it.