Restricted Area - German demo out

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Grifman
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Restricted Area - German demo out

Post by Grifman »

Ok, I don't speak/read German but I d/led the demo. Thought I couldn't understand everything I could get the general gist of things. The game is a sci-fi Diablo clone and it seems pretty good. Lots of different weapons, all sorts of cybernetic, biological implants, etc. Looks to have some interesting character development options, though my lack of German prevented me from understanding most of what was available for upgrading.

You can catch the demo at Gamer's Hell. Should have news on a US/UK version in the next week or so.

Grifman
Gorath
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Post by Gorath »

I´m almost through the 3rd of the 4 chars. A few impressions - helps me structure my thoughts for the review ;) :

1. Johnson (heavy arms) -> demo
The most simple and most straight forward char. Not much thinking necessary. Not that impressive but so easy that you´re through quickly. I would call it a nice warm-up.

2. Kenji (Katana, dual pistols)
Clearly better. You have the choice between developing your skills for Katana or dual pistols, which requires a different focus.

3. Victoria (Psi attacks)
Again clearly better and more interesting. She is a mage type, weapons are rather worthless. She can practically only (!) use genetically modified Bioware (!), which both limits the choice because it excludes Cyberware and is very expensive.

4. Jessica (Hacking)
No comment yet.

The chars are very different, the story short. It´s impossible to max out the stats on your first run through the story. Good replay value, so I don´t think the people criticizing the game´s not long enough are right.



Graphics:
2D, Good enough, constantly 63 fps - no matter what happens on screen, nice big explosions. The real-time shadows are much better than you would expect after looking at the screenshots. The generated dungeons suffer through the limited number of tylesets, though.

FMVs:
Dynamic and action packed. Medium quality. Nothing to complain. You can make choices in the middle of a FMV, sometimes. It´s interrupted and you can make your decision. Very well done. Unfortunately this doesn´t happen often enough.

Sound, etc.:
Great voice acting, very good f/x, two good sound tracks. The whole sound department is strong.

Stability & bugs:
So far there was a patch ~ every 10 days, the next is announced for this week. The release version was buggy. Now it´s much better, all stability issues are solved, many gameplay bugs also. Still a handfull serious bugs left, but they stay in the background. Now it´s stable and very playable.
No Starforce. The used CP seems to be harmless. I´ve only seen less than 10 people in the forums who thought they had CP issues (which of cause turned out to be configuration problems).

Action:
Hard & Fast. Try the demo - this is the slowest action you´ll see in the game. All chars have at least one of the following skills: running speed, attacking speed, casting speed, recovery after an attack, strafing, teleport, rescue jump.

Balancing:
Neither perfect nor unfair. The difficulty doesn´t grow constantly, it jumps. This can still be improved.

Interface:
Very good. Clean, fast, stylish and unobtrusive. All 3 mouse buttons can be configured. Quicksave and quickload have been patched in.

MP:
I didn´t try it yet. Forum talk says it´s unplayable.

Misc:
-items can be exchanged between the chars
-the few NPCs react differently towards the main chars
-items can be put aside at the shop if you don´t have the money yet.
-an equivalent to set items exists. ("Company bonus")
-items can be made according to your specifications if you have a blank (?). I had a left arm made for Vicky. 4 stats improved as far as possible (-> 200k $) and then the arm modified for Vicky (120k $). The average mission earns you 50-70k. The arm was worth it, though.
-weapons can be enhanced. Expensive.
-Arms and legs can be "turned around". Left becomes right and vice versa. All this means money is never useless.
-enemies don´t respawn in cleaned areas/levels
-You sometimes find "self-learning weapons".



Conclusion so far:
A nice little effective game. Mediocre starts, but thankfully it gets better with growing complexity. Definitely better than most Diablo clones. Some nice ideas. Twice the budget and it could have been a real killer.
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Grifman
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Post by Grifman »

Gorath wrote:I´m almost through the 3rd of the 4 chars. A few impressions - helps me structure my thoughts for the review ;) :

1. Johnson (heavy arms) -> demo
The most simple and most straight forward char. Not much thinking necessary. Not that impressive but so easy that you´re through quickly. I would call it a nice warm-up.
Yes, I played him in the demo, only character available. One thing I liked is the ability to right click and "force fire" into an area. I'd move through a door, draw the enemy in, then move back through it, open fire just at the entrance, slaughtering the bad guys who walked into my fire :)
The chars are very different, the story short. It´s impossible to max out the stats on your first run through the story. Good replay value, so I don´t think the people criticizing the game´s not long enough are right.
I've heard this too, but can't you take an almost endless number of random missions? I thought the game had a random mission generator. Of course I did also hear that they get a bit repetitive because there are limited types of maps - just didn't have the budget for more artwork.

But you are right, the 4 characters are very different, and play out different parts of the story. So you have to judge the game length after playing all the characters, not just one.
Graphics:
2D, Good enough, constantly 63 fps - no matter what happens on screen, nice big explosions. The real-time shadows are much better than you would expect after looking at the screenshots. The generated dungeons suffer through the limited number of tylesets, though.
Yes, I thought the game looked much better than the screenshots, though I didn't think those looked bad at all. And, yes, I've heard there are limited tilesets also.
Sound, etc.:
Great voice acting, very good f/x, two good sound tracks. The whole sound department is strong.
Hopefully the English version will have good voiceacting?
Stability & bugs:
So far there was a patch ~ every 10 days, the next is announced for this week. The release version was buggy. Now it´s much better, all stability issues are solved, many gameplay bugs also. Still a handfull serious bugs left, but they stay in the background. Now it´s stable and very playable.
No Starforce. The used CP seems to be harmless. I´ve only seen less than 10 people in the forums who thought they had CP issues (which of cause turned out to be configuration problems).
Yes, I heard it was very, very buggy upon release. Hopefully this will all be cleared up before the US version is released :)
Interface:
Very good. Clean, fast, stylish and unobtrusive. All 3 mouse buttons can be configured. Quicksave and quickload have been patched in.
Yeah, alot of games could learn from RS about interfaces.
Misc:
-items can be exchanged between the chars
-the few NPCs react differently towards the main chars
-items can be put aside at the shop if you don´t have the money yet.
-an equivalent to set items exists. ("Company bonus")
-items can be made according to your specifications if you have a blank (?). I had a left arm made for Vicky. 4 stats improved as far as possible (-> 200k $) and then the arm modified for Vicky (120k $). The average mission earns you 50-70k. The arm was worth it, though.
-weapons can be enhanced. Expensive.
-Arms and legs can be "turned around". Left becomes right and vice versa. All this means money is never useless.
-enemies don´t respawn in cleaned areas/levels
-You sometimes find "self-learning weapons".
Arms/legs can be turned around. Hmm, didn't realize that from the demo. That's good, it seemed a bit of a pain to link arms/legs to certain sides. I'll have to go back and look again.
Conclusion so far:
A nice little effective game. Mediocre starts, but thankfully it gets better with growing complexity. Definitely better than most Diablo clones. Some nice ideas. Twice the budget and it could have been a real killer.
Thanks for the deeper review.

Grifman
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JayG
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Post by JayG »

I almost brought it, as I'm a huge fan of this type of setting, but as I couldn't it brought Knights of Honour instead. I did play it on a friends PC though, and I didn't like it at all. I found it very tedious and repetitive, although the exploding enviroments are cool. I only played a couple of hours though, so Gorath could be right about it improving in time. And the only Diablo-type game i ever enjoyed was Sacred, so if Diablo is your type of thing you could love it.
Gorath
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Post by Gorath »

Grifman wrote: Yes, I played him in the demo, only character available. One thing I liked is the ability to right click and "force fire" into an area. I'd move through a door, draw the enemy in, then move back through it, open fire just at the entrance, slaughtering the bad guys who walked into my fire :)
Yes, this is very useful. Another nice touch is that bullets fly until they hit something. If you´re using something slow, like Psi Shot - sort of a blue fireball- for example, you can follow it for a few meters.
Psi Shot is fires 1 ball early on, 3 at level 5 or so and 5 balls at once near max. They´re spread over a ~60° angle. Each one of them flies as far as possible and causes a shodow on nearby objects.

I've heard this too, but can't you take an almost endless number of random missions? I thought the game had a random mission generator. Of course I did also hear that they get a bit repetitive because there are limited types of maps - just didn't have the budget for more artwork.

But you are right, the 4 characters are very different, and play out different parts of the story. So you have to judge the game length after playing all the characters, not just one.
Yes, there´s a random mission generator.
You play 4 very similar storylines. One could also say the same story from each character´s perspective.
The missions are of course repetitve. It´s a Diablo clone. A dungeon is generated, you go in there and kill everything.

Hopefully the English version will have good voiceacting?
I doubt it. The German version has the German voices of Arnold, Angelina Jolie, Jet Li and Alicia Silverstone. Sounds rather expensive to me. I´m not sure the international publisher will invest that much money in it.


Yes, I heard it was very, very buggy upon release. Hopefully this will all be cleared up before the US version is released :)
It´s stable and playable, although the bug situation went worse with the more complex chars. The generator created 2 unsolvable missions, for example.

Conclusion so far:
A nice little effective game. Mediocre starts, but thankfully it gets better with growing complexity. Definitely better than most Diablo clones. Some nice ideas. Twice the budget and it could have been a real killer.
The conclusion remains the same.

A few words about Jessica:
She can enter Cyberspace to retrieve power-ups or energy for her drone. The drone is quite powerful. It can be ramped up with various skills.
The upward trend continues, Jessica is the most interesting char.
Gorath
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Post by Gorath »

JayG wrote:I almost brought it, as I'm a huge fan of this type of setting, but as I couldn't it brought Knights of Honour instead. I did play it on a friends PC though, and I didn't like it at all. I found it very tedious and repetitive, although the exploding enviroments are cool. I only played a couple of hours though, so Gorath could be right about it improving in time. And the only Diablo-type game i ever enjoyed was Sacred, so if Diablo is your type of thing you could love it.
Yes, if you´re not a fan of Diablo-type games RA will probably bore you after a short time. The strange thing is that I found Sacred boring. ;) I wouldn´t deny that Sacred is a good game and probably the best Diablo clone so far, though.
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