For the King

[Sepiche]

Picked this up on a whim over the weekend, and really enjoying it. It's a bit of a mashup of a few different games, but they come together into a fun, board game style, turn based RPG with a lot of replayability. The game itself I would probably describe as something like Runebound (the boardgame) meets Final Fantasy, or perhaps Darkest Dungeon meets Armello.

http://store.steampowered.com/app/527230/



The game starts with you picking from a list of classes to make up your party of 3. The game starts with 4 classes unlocked, and the other 4, along with extra encounters, items, etc, can be unlocked by completing tasks in the campaign which give you lore books that are spent between games in the lore store to get unlocks. From there you start on a randomly generated hex map of the realm and have to begin the first stage of the quest to defeat chaos spreading in the realm.

The trick is you have a limited number of turns to complete the multiple steps that make up each stage of the quest. Despite the time limit though, the fastest way to failure is to rush from story mission to story mission without stopping to do side quests, side dungeons, and fight random enemies to raise your characters levels enough to survive the dungeons that are the cornerstone of story mission.

Each main turn of the campaign is made up of you moving your heroes one by one on the map. Each time they run into wandering enemies on the map it also pulls in nearby heroes and other nearby monsters into a turn based battle. This means as long as your heroes are within a few hexes of each other they can go about different tasks while still teaming up to fight together. The game also supports up to 3 person coop where each member of the party is played by a different player.



The battles themselves are a very stylish and polished turn based system reminiscent of older Final Fantasy games. Completing battles gives your party experience as well as item drops that are both key to succeeding in the later stages of the game.



All the good aside, the game is still in early access and while remarkably polished and seemingly near feature complete, it's got a lot of little UI quirks and plenty of little balance changes that need to be made before it's completely ready for prime time, but it still feels like a nearly complete game that's a lot of fun to play.

One last word of warning is that the game is very hard... it's a rogue-like by nature and, even on easy, it's a fine balancing act trying to complete all the quests in time while still getting your characters built up enough to survive.

For anyone still on the fence there are a number of videos out there now that give a good impression of the gameplay, but even in it's current form it gets my thumbs up.

[ColdSteel]

I've got this on my wishlist but I hate the idea of the chaos counter time limit. I'm going to wait until they introduce the sandbox mode without the counter and see what people say about it then. I just hate artificial time limits in games like this.

[Sepiche]

I generally don't like games on a timer, but here I think it works as it's pretty forgiving. In the first stage of the main mission you can complete it in about 3 or 4 turns if you push, but the timer gives you something like 12 turns which is generally more than enough to level up and still get to where you need to go in plenty of time. Later in the game you're having to do a lot of travelling to get all the quests finished in time, but by that point you've also got access to portal and teleport scrolls which can help in covering large distances fast.

[ColdSteel]

Thanks Sepiche. How important is equipment in this game vs. skills? What kinds of things can you find and use? Is the equipment part of the game fun?

[Sepiche]

Thanks Sepiche. How important is equipment in this game vs. skills? What kinds of things can you find and use? Is the equipment part of the game fun?

There are a number of different stats for each character, and different weapons rely on different stats when they make their hit rolls.

For instance, musical instruments generally use the Talent skill, and so when you go to roll to hit with a lute, your characters Talent skill is the basis for the roll. Damage and what effects your attacks come from the weapon itself. As I understand it, character level also has a small impact on damage and to hit rolls based on your level compared to your target. So one lute might have a damage of 10 and allow you to do a basic attack, a stun, and party buffs, while another might have a base damage of 12 and lets you do attacks and a single target haste.

So with all that said, to answer your question, a lot of how hard a character hits and what attacks they can do is based on the weapon they are using, but how likely they are to hit for full damage is based on the relevant skill which goes up with character level and item boosts. So items are a big part of the game, and seeing all the new and different abilities you can get from them is a blast, but without some levels on your character, a good item alone isn't going to help much.

So far the items I've seen tend break down by class, as in if you look at the boosts they give they are clearly designed for a particular class, but you are allowed to give any items to any character. There are staves and books for scholars, bows for hunters, melee weapons for the blacksmith, musical instruments for the bard, etc.

I should also mention that one interesting part of the back story is that the greatest heroes in the realm have already failed to defeat the evil, which is why you start out with blacksmiths, woodcutters, and buskers rather than paladins and mages.

[ColdSteel]

It certainly sounds good. I guess I'm going to need to add this one to my pile.

[tgb]

I like it, with the exception of the color palette. I find it kind of hard to distinguish encounters against the background.

[ColdSteel]

I guess I'm just a sucker for these kinds of games. I took one look at a let's play and had to have it. Boughten! I fear this does not bode well for my current Battle Brothers campaign.

[LordMortis]

I guess I'm just a sucker for these kinds of games. I took one look at a let's play and had to have it. Boughten! I fear this does not bode well for my current Battle Brothers campaign.

LOL

Where was this thready this weekend when I was looking for *something* and was getting frustrated at not being able to find my license for Railroad Tycoon II.

I but my BB game on hold when they patched it so quickly. I didn't want a feature shifting game when your summary threw me back in to the game.

[ColdSteel]

Well, I might have to get a refund for this. I only played a half hour before it black screened in combat. Had to reboot. I'll wait a few days first and see if they patch it.

[tgb]

Well, I might have to get a refund for this. I only played a half hour before it black screened in combat. Had to reboot. I'll wait a few days first and see if they patch it.

You do realize it's Early Access, right?

[Lorini]

Well, I might have to get a refund for this. I only played a half hour before it black screened in combat. Had to reboot. I'll wait a few days first and see if they patch it.

You do realize it's Early Access, right?

If he can't play it he should get a refund and wait until he can play it, yes?

[tgb]

Well, I might have to get a refund for this. I only played a half hour before it black screened in combat. Had to reboot. I'll wait a few days first and see if they patch it.

You do realize it's Early Access, right?

If he can't play it he should get a refund and wait until he can play it, yes?

If he wants to be sure of that he should probably wait until 1.0. Anyone who buys a game in EA with the thought of getting a refund at the first sign of a crash shouldn't be buying EA games, imo. Crashes come with the territory (not always, but at least should be expected)

[morlac]

Well, I might have to get a refund for this. I only played a half hour before it black screened in combat. Had to reboot. I'll wait a few days first and see if they patch it.

You do realize it's Early Access, right?

If he can't play it he should get a refund and wait until he can play it, yes?

If he wants to be sure of that he should probably wait until 1.0. Anyone who buys a game in EA with the thought of getting a refund at the first sign of a crash shouldn't be buying EA games, imo. Crashes come with the territory (not always, but at least should be expected)

Nonsene, I could reverse that. They shouldn't sell a game as early access if it's not playable. Access implies you can access it and play. Early implies it may not be feature complete, will change and will have bugs. It never implies it might not be playable. Crashes are expected sure but BSOD with a forced reboot...no thanks. Also, he said he'd give it a patch and try again before deciding. Seems reasonable to me and the same think I did with ARK before refunding it.

[Lorini]

You have no guarantee that they are going to do ANYTHING on the game. If it doesn't work, get a refund!!

[tgb]

Well, I might have to get a refund for this. I only played a half hour before it black screened in combat. Had to reboot. I'll wait a few days first and see if they patch it.

You do realize it's Early Access, right?

If he can't play it he should get a refund and wait until he can play it, yes?

If he wants to be sure of that he should probably wait until 1.0. Anyone who buys a game in EA with the thought of getting a refund at the first sign of a crash shouldn't be buying EA games, imo. Crashes come with the territory (not always, but at least should be expected)

Nonsene, I could reverse that. They shouldn't sell a game as early access if it's not playable. Access implies you can access it and play. Early implies it may not be feature complete, will change and will have bugs. It never implies it might not be playable. Crashes are expected sure but BSOD with a forced reboot...no thanks. Also, he said he'd give it a patch and try again before deciding. Seems reasonable to me and the same think I did with ARK before refunding it.

I agree - if a game is completely unplayable it shouldn't be sold or purchased, which is why I never buy something in Early Access without scouring the comments section first, as well as replies by the developer. But clearly coldsteel is having issues that aren't that common. Lots of people are able play it without crashes.

There isn't a game in existence, no matter how rock-solid it may be for 99.9% of the rest of the population, some someone, somewhere, isn't having issues with. Hell, it's been over a year and I still can't play XCOM 2 without it crashing on me after about 15 minutes.

All I'm saying is being surprised by an Early Access game crashing is like being surprised there's gambling going on at Rick's.

[Lorini]

Right we all know EA games can be cranky. When one doesn't work I get the refund and then keep checking back to see if my issues have been addressed. If so I buy it again.

[ColdSteel]

Right. I'm not surprised it crashed. Not in the first week of EA. Just disappointed I can't play it. I'm going to play with my drivers a bit and see if that fixes it. If they patch it within the 14 day refund period, I'll give that a try too. Otherwise, I'll refund and wait for the release. As Lorini says, you have no guarantees that your particular crash issue will ever be fixed. Especially with small developers such as this.

[Sepiche]

Got all the way to the last battle in my current game last night, was able to kill the two enemies with the last boss, but he killed me off before I could finish him. I had him down to half health, so it was close, but couldn't finish him off. That gave me a enough lore points to unlock all the other classes and a number of other things for my next run through. In particular I've heard the herbalist class is very useful.

I think my main mistake was just trying to rush the last dungeon. It gave me an optional mission to clear out a temple for artifacts before heading to the final dungeon, and I probably had the time to do it with teleport scrolls, but I decided to skip it. I think a few better weapons/armor and some more healing herbs and I would have been able to win.

[ColdSteel]

I tried updating to the latest NVidia driver and running the game again. It black screened and crashed again after only one turn. At least this time it did not prevent me from alt-tabbing out to windows before it crashed. And it created a crash log folder this time. Apparently the game uses Unity.

I reported the issue and excerpts from the crash log in the bug section of the Steam forum and asked if they needed more information. No response. I posted some more info and asked if the devs actually read the bug forum. Still no response. I'm not getting a warm, fuzzy feeling about these devs. Especially since they're using Unity which is a beginner's choice. They posted a new patch today but it does not appear to address any of the crash issues. They also said they're off to Pax East and updates will be slower so I'm thinking I'll unfortunately have to end up getting this refunded unless I can fix it myself.

Sepiche, you seem to be able to run the game fine. What video card do you have?

It seems to me that the error exception below I got might be a Direct3D 11 Runtime issue? Anyone know? I wonder if maybe my GeForce 670 might not support Direct3D 11 that well, being an older card.

Unity Player [version: Unity 5.3.5f1_960ebf59018a]
d3d11.dll caused an Access Violation (0xc0000005)
in module d3d11.dll at 0023:646065ba.

[tgb]

I have a 650, so I don't think it's the card. Maybe instead of the newest driver try rolling it back a couple versions?

[Sepiche]

Sepiche, you seem to be able to run the game fine. What video card do you have?

I'm using a nVidia 970 with the latest drivers.

[dbemont]

Looks very interesting, except for the time limits.

Anyone else want to chime in on the extent to which this looms over gameplay?

[Skinypupy]

Thanks for the heads-up, you had me at "Final Fantasy". This one is definitely going on my wishlist.

Gonna wait until it gets released though, looks like it's still a bit rough.

[ColdSteel]

After getting a refund I kept this on my wish list because I still wanted to play it at some point. I just picked it up again at 25% off during the Steam summer sale and I'm happy to say that my crash bug is fixed and it works great now. They also just introduced a big update this week that removes the hard limit on the number of turns you have to complete the quests which really improves it a lot. I have 25 hours in the game so far and the bottom line is I'm having a blast. What a great little game. I HIGHLY recommend it if you've been at all thinking about getting it. It's a steal at $11.

[Smoove_B]

Thanks for posting that update as your STEAM review was pushed to the top of my feed when I look at this game in the store and it's still currently set to your prior impressions of "Don't Buy".

[ColdSteel]

Thanks for posting that update as your STEAM review was pushed to the top of my feed when I look at this game in the store and it's still currently set to your prior impressions of "Don't Buy".

Thanks for pointing that out. I've edited/updated my review and changed it to "buy".

[ColdSteel]

On my second game I made it all the way to the final boss encounter. He absolutely destroyed me. It was a shock because I had no issues with the dungeon battles leading up to the boss. I had plenty of healing left, some great weapons and was feeling good about the possibility of winning the game at level 11. Now I'll have to come up with some other way to beat him and it won't be easy. I've since read that using shock on him could do the trick so I'll try that the next time I make it that far.

The game has lots of little rough edges to smooth out but overall it's really polished for EA. I'm particularly impressed with their game designer, he really seems to know his stuff. Nothing in the game is unique in itself but how they blend it all together makes for a unique and very fun experience. This is one of those games that seems very simple but has a lot of stuff in it that you're constantly finding out about as you play. I think it has a lot more room to grow with additional content and mechanics. I hope it does well enough for them to explore it's full potential.

[LordMortis]

Now Free on Epic.

I might finally try this when I go on furlough next week.