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Decline Kult: Heretic Kingdoms / Heretic Kingdoms: The Inquisition

Cynic

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Joined
Feb 22, 2011
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1,850
From the videos I saw it did seem to have its own kind of cool style to it. Would like to check it out. Hegel why is it terrible exactly?
 

Cynic

Arcane
Joined
Feb 22, 2011
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1,850
Yeah might just order it from amazon. Damn even UK store only has German version...
 

Murk

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Jan 17, 2008
Messages
13,459
Very charming game, has a system that breaks down near the end if you take advantage of a few obviously imbalanced skills. Has some surprisingly nice storytelling, especially in the form of the cut scenes which have cool art + cool voice over. A bit of political intrigue over the legacy of an artifact, some religious stuff. Has a novel setting -- the Inquisitor that snuffs out religion instead of defending or propagating it, has the whole "dual world" thing going on where you can enter the dream/shadow/spirit/gloom world. Probably one of few games that requires you to play as a female. Overall, if the game had someone with some real directional ability behind it -- could have been amazing. The non-existent sequel, "Unlikely Hero" they have briefly talked about sounded amazing conceptually.

In terms of what you'll see.... some decent hack n slash combat with a novel magic system that focuses on... cool downs :D, an interesting twist on healing that goes directly against spamming and encourages you to risk taking more damage before healing with your healing item, relatively different weapons that have their own unique points, and some cool 2d art with 3d characters and effects over it.

This is one of those "good for what it is" games, but to me it was very charming because it had a lot of things that COULD have been interesting that unfortunately were just never capitalized on. If someone were to do an expanded sequel, I think it could easily be a game in league with Divine Divinity 1 (perhaps not exactly the same, but clearly parallel in quality).

I tried to find a youtube video of the cutscenes but none came up unfortunately. Oh well. Basically, the game takes place in a setting where a human hero killed a chaotic god and became somewhat of a revered persona -- religion is outlawed and the storyline focuses on a cult that has stolen the sword the hero used, the "godslayer", and is trying to use it to return religion. Well worth 5 bucks, IMO.

One review said the follwing:

I also enjoyed Heretic Kingdoms' story. While a good number of games' stories rely strictly on good versus evil, this game seeks to let you make your own choices. The marketing blurb on the box states that all of your actions will have consequences within the game world; however, some of those choices are so subtly integrated into the story, you won't realize you've made a definitive choice until you're affected by it later in the game.

It's been so long for me that I do not recall how much C&C is in the game, as I was under the impression it was pretty linear, but this may have been because I just did not realize what I was choosing was having an effect. There's not exactly a lot of quests but there's some optional content here and there.
 

Cynic

Arcane
Joined
Feb 22, 2011
Messages
1,850
Yeah it sounds like something I would like but FFS finding it is not easy. What exactly is wrong with the PB Exxxclusive version?
 

abnaxus

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Dec 31, 2010
Messages
10,849
Location
Fiernes
Very charming game, has a system that breaks down near the end if you take advantage of a few obviously imbalanced skills. Has some surprisingly nice storytelling, especially in the form of the cut scenes which have cool art + cool voice over. A bit of political intrigue over the legacy of an artifact, some religious stuff. Has a novel setting -- the Inquisitor that snuffs out religion instead of defending or propagating it, has the whole "dual world" thing going on where you can enter the dream/shadow/spirit/gloom world. Probably one of few games that requires you to play as a female. Overall, if the game had someone with some real directional ability behind it -- could have been amazing. The non-existent sequel, "Unlikely Hero" they have briefly talked about sounded amazing conceptually.
Yeah, and there even was a good reason why the protagonist was female.

This is an old designer diary about the sequel: http://www.rpgwatch.com/show/article?articleid=9&ref=0&id=111
 

Murk

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Joined
Jan 17, 2008
Messages
13,459
Reluctant hero! That was the name. That diary is super awesome, worth reading for people who like the inspiration and conception of games.

Kult was just so much potential that unfortunately didn't pan out. The dev diary and the game just remind me a lot of the "spirit" of how things are done at Larian (at least, it is the impression that is given off by Larian through Vincke's blog and their surprisingly open approach to sharing information that other developers keep hidden), which is really how I wish all game developers worked.
 

Cynic

Arcane
Joined
Feb 22, 2011
Messages
1,850
Hmmm second one is new. I see that it also came out for mac - I have a macbook air which I've been dying to install this kind of game on...might get it for that, but fuck it is $30 from here http://www.macgamestore.com/product/653/Kult-Heretic-Kingdoms/

edit: seems like some kind of shit port that crashes routinely.

I will order for the supreme platform from Amazon...or pirate it.
 

Murk

Arcane
Joined
Jan 17, 2008
Messages
13,459
Is 3d people even around anymore? I can't find their site and the http://www.3d-people.de/ site is... ambiguous.

Might just be do with not-removing-from-inventory for now until you can find a way that might actually benefit the dev.

Unrelated: Cynic, a friend and I powered through Vagrant Story a week ago. We talked about how when we were young children the game made us cry with its forging and affinity system and we decided we would have our revenge -- it went rather well, albeit with some strange, strange situations (like relying entirely on raging ache and chains of 50 hits in a row to kill a dragon we had no affinity-tuned weapon for).

How far did you get?
 

abnaxus

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3d people were just seven Slovakians who worked for 5 years on the game in their free time with help from that British guy's studio.

This is an old pic of them I managed to find on Google Image

images


It might be best to get the game for Mac; I replayed it during the Summer but it will not run on Vista or Win 7 without tweaking an .exe file.
 

Cynic

Arcane
Joined
Feb 22, 2011
Messages
1,850
Unrelated: Cynic, a friend and I powered through Vagrant Story a week ago. We talked about how when we were young children the game made us cry with its forging and affinity system and we decided we would have our revenge -- it went rather well, albeit with some strange, strange situations (like relying entirely on raging ache and chains of 50 hits in a row to kill a dragon we had no affinity-tuned weapon for).

How far did you get?

How did you like it?

I beat the game a couple of times when it came out on PS1. Loved it so much. When it came out on the PSN I got it on my PS3 account and then borrowed a PSP from a friend and transferred my files over so I could just play anytime.

I never had an issue with the affinity system. I generally carried a kind of weapon that I thought would work against most monsters throughout the game. But yeah, the abilities like raging ache let you do a lot of damage even if you don't have affinity for that monster. Status affecting them works well too. I thought the biggest disappointment was how offensive magic worked, I never really found it very useful at all, but I believe that you can make a build that uses a staff with high INT bonus and then use magic quite effectively. The problem is you need to do the magic early on because if you miss a spell, not only do you just miss, but you lose MP as well, which you're gonna need for healing and stuff later most likely. I thought the system was fun but there were a few things kind of broken about it. But in the end that's what makes it so unique.
 

Cynic

Arcane
Joined
Feb 22, 2011
Messages
1,850
3d people were just seven Slovakians who worked for 5 years on the game in their free time with help from that British guy's studio.

This is an old pic of them I managed to find on Google Image

images


It might be best to get the game for Mac; I replayed it during the Summer but it will not run on Vista or Win 7 without tweaking an .exe file.

Interesting. I wonder what happens to the engine, all the code, the assets, after something like this gets made and then flops...
 

Murk

Arcane
Joined
Jan 17, 2008
Messages
13,459
How did you like it?

Aside from the ridiculous S&M gear, the art has aged very well -- and the special effects look great. FF Tactics had that too, where the surprisingly simple effects were beautiful because of clever use of particles, transparencies, and colors. The combat was at times tedious but it was fun to encounter something like the first Mimic who just rapes you if you you aren't ready, or the first dragon where you're still so weak and gearless that you may need to resort to some ridiculous strategy. The storyline was... painful but luckily can be mostly skipped, and I love it when the skills/abilities I use are also used by enemies (as well as items).

I beat the game a couple of times when it came out on PS1. Loved it so much. When it came out on the PSN I got it on my PS3 account and then borrowed a PSP from a friend and transferred my files over so I could just play anytime.

I never had an issue with the affinity system. I generally carried a kind of weapon that I thought would work against most monsters throughout the game. But yeah, the abilities like raging ache let you do a lot of damage even if you don't have affinity for that monster. Status affecting them works well too. I thought the biggest disappointment was how offensive magic worked, I never really found it very useful at all, but I believe that you can make a build that uses a staff with high INT bonus and then use magic quite effectively. The problem is you need to do the magic early on because if you miss a spell, not only do you just miss, but you lose MP as well, which you're gonna need for healing and stuff later most likely. I thought the system was fun but there were a few things kind of broken about it. But in the end that's what makes it so unique.

The way I saw the game was that you never really were all warrior or all caster -- spells like prostasia, herakles, tarnish, degenerate, the elemental buffs, and healing were absolutely necessary where-as the attack spells were a bit gimmicky in damage but then I always had low-int high-str gear for the defense boosts and used non-int weapons, I imagine if I built the affinities up on the appropriate equipment it'd be more effective. Early on of course spirit-surge does great damage to undead, often one-shotting them, but practically eats up all of your MP.

The game is really just a question of if you understand the system. As children, my friend and I didn't and so we were destroyed regularly, but as adults it came to us very easily -- especially once we got enough items to combine and reforge.

Damn shame Square stopped making decent games -- the mid to end range of the PS1 had their best games, IMO, like Tactics, Saga Frontier, Vagrant Story, Legend of Mana, etc. and it seems the attempts to return to those games have just resulted in canned rehashes. Luckily, the 1.3 insane difficulty mod on tactics is giving me a lot of fun gameplay and a constant stream of "holy fuck that was clever".
 

Cynic

Arcane
Joined
Feb 22, 2011
Messages
1,850
You didn't like the story? I actually thought it was one of the best for a game from a Japanese dev...really liked the entire concept.

Fuck I NEED to try that Tactics mod. So you just do this through a PS1 emulator on PC?
 

Murk

Arcane
Joined
Jan 17, 2008
Messages
13,459
The story itself was fine, the same way Tactics Ogre: LUCT and FF: Tactics' story was fine... it was just very convoluted and in VS's case it throws you into multiple conflicts with many characters with almost no introduction. It becomes obvious that the Cult is not really the main threat and that the Order is more malicious, but the dialog itself is often full of "wait... so is Rosencrantz good or bad?" -- however, I can appreciate the story coming together... just... you know the flashback to the tree with the family being killed it just got a little weird at times. TI could definitely have been cleaner.

The mod is great -- you use a patcher program of the patch to the .iso and it runs perfectly on EPSXE. Heads up, your shit WILL be fucked, and the classes are rebalanced enough that it takes a bit to figure out what is effective and what's not, as well as non-obvious strategies like doing MP damage or using archers' weird status-attacks.

Steal becomes far more important, as now all enemies scale to your level, and so story battles are far more difficult at times than random battles, and often the only way to get vaguely level appropriate gear is to steal from the enemy (who often use the Maintenance skill).

The AI is super beefed up, and while damage output is increased, the balance between player and enemy becomes much better. Random battles also often feature 2 independent parties that fight each other as they fight you. The content changes can make it seem super munchkiny but they make for a much more balanced game and return a lot of usefulness to otherwise useless skills and classes.
 

Cynic

Arcane
Joined
Feb 22, 2011
Messages
1,850
NO BRO the resolution change fixed it. But that's annoying...I want to play windowed...hmm

that's weird so I set it to play windowed, set my res back to 1920 x 1080 but it crashes on start up. LAME
 

FeelTheRads

Arcane
Joined
Apr 18, 2008
Messages
13,716
NO BRO the resolution change fixed it. But that's annoying...I want to play windowed...hmm

that's weird so I set it to play windowed, set my res back to 1920 x 1080 but it crashes on start up. LAME

Yeah, weird. Works for me, the full game, windowed. No slowdowns.
 

FeelTheRads

Arcane
Joined
Apr 18, 2008
Messages
13,716
98/Me

Disable visual themes
Disable desktop composition
Disable display scaling on high DPI settings

Nothing else. No resolution change. Also installed patches 1.3 and 1.5. Note that if you install 1.5 the game will still say 1.3 in the main menu.
What video card do you have? Maybe it has more issues on ATI?

Edit: Oh, right, maybe you also need to run as administrator. I don't know. I have disabled that shit.
 

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