Decline Sword Coast Legends - RIP n-Space!

[Panzerbärchen]

Well if you got a turd and want to sell it anyway... maybe don't keep shitting on it, those who are into that kind of crap already got it anyway and to catch others it's not helping to add extra hoops to get to the turd.

 

[Telengard]

More like people asked again why WotC doesn't make yet another d&d game where they lose money.

Now, if the sales trajectory of Gold Box games wasn't downwards, or if we could pretend TOEE had been even playing in the same league as Baldur's Gate, we wouldn't be in this place we are in.

EDIT: Or if people would admit the rpg audience can't accept all-the-frills investment and purchase games made from a lower investment package deal, there'd be real d&d games again.

D:OS sold a million copies dumbfuck.

There's absolutely no reason why a competent pc exclusive turn based 5E D&D cRPG can't do the same. Notice I emphasize the word com|pe¦tent.

We're not talking about a minor-leaguer here, idiot. We're talking about a company who is going to be expected to produce a high-end game. DOS may have done a million, but there have always been some rpgs that do a million. Unfortunately, they are outliers, with 50,000-250,000 being way way more common. And, couple that average with the rpg audience's insistence that they deserve top quality product, and it ensures that rpgs remain a bad investment vehicle for investment money. And since rpgers insist on games with high quality graphics, but refuse to pay more per item, that means going to investment money.

Which is why turn-based d&d has been reduced to Facebook games and other low-investment vehicles.

So, in a time when there are a lot more gamers than ever before, you're going to go to the investors with a single result that STILL doesn't outperform a fifteen year old game by the name of Baldur's Gate? And doesn't even approach half? And doesn't do so even when the price point is significantly lower (considering inflation). 'Cause I gotta tell ya, you want to hear someone call you a moron fifteen ways to Sunday, take your numbers to them. Go on. Do record it, too. I want a laugh.

EDIT: added context for morans

 

[mediocrepoet]

I tried this thing for a few hours to get passed the opening. It's awful. I was wrong about being like Gauntlet though, it's more like Dragon Age except boring (or more boring if you hated Dragon Age).

The abilities are dull in action and nothing made me think, "Wow, that was pretty cool." The character creation doesn't have much in the way of interesting options. Various distinct subclasses are represented by a skill tree within a class. So, arcane trickster is a rogue skill tree. These skill trees don't require any commitment to them, so you can mix and match as you like - they resemble Dragon Age 2's "awesome" skill trees in both appearance and execution. The effectiveness of the abilities do seem to be linked back to your core attributes. Normally I love character creation, but here I just sort of scrolled through things with my eyes glazing over.

As far as I can tell, character creation can only be done to start a new story campaign (then the characters can be used in other modes). You can only have one story campaign at a time, which means that if you want to start a new character, you have to overwrite your other campaign's progress. (Unless I missed something, the UI isn't the most intuitive thing around.)

The story is something about demons in your dreams and looking to find the reason why. Setting felt painfully boring and generic (this might mean that they successfully captured the source material).

Pros:
- Looks pretty when it's not moving.
- You can make Drizzt.
- Has variety of D&D weapons and armour, including trap crap that you won't want to use if you're paying attention.
- Possible cure for insomnia.

Cons:
- Animations are janky.
- Characters slide around in combat when others move into them.
- Combat is BORING.
- Character creation and advancement is as interesting as Dragon Age 2.
- You can make Drizzt.

?
- Best playable dream sequences since Max Payne. They sucked there too.

Verdict:
Apparently beggars can be choosers. I got bored of this even playing for free, I'd be upset if I would've spent money.

 

[Pirata Alma Negra]

Aren't enough TB games already? Why is should matter if it is D&D or not, this generic fantasy is all the same.

 

[mediocrepoet]

I forgot to add:

There are no skills, feats, etc. it's all just points spent on the Dragon Age 2 tree. Want to be able to search? Spend a point. Want to search better? Buy search II, III AND IV! etc.

Gear is colour coded to go along with the MMO/Dragon Age style cooldowns.

On a positive note, they did try to give you choices at least in the beginning sections. There were a few places where you could betray/kill/release people and basically play your alignment/character. I'm not sure if you can have alignment shifts in the game (I doubt it), but it was a nice touch. Some seemed to have consequences like taking a better reward or getting offered a new vendor with deals, etc. The game was still boring as hell to actually play though.

 

[Space Insect]

Steam free weekend, requesting account for a single player RPG trial, fail. :-|

Just some spoiled children who felt it was inconvenient to write down their mail-adress... There's no limits to what some people can have themselves complain about with this game...

Well I guess it takes one casual to know another casual, amirite guys?

 

[Grubba]

Well, we (the fans and players of the game) aren't that many

...

...and you haven't taken the time to think about why this is the case? Oh, that's right, it's just because "D&D isn't popular anymore". Ya, that's why this game isn't doing well...

 

[Lhynn]

Whats amazing is the amount of lost sales this game has because of not sticking to the system. This shit could have been bigger dan D:OS if it played its cards right.

 

[Grubba]

Well their first mistake was making a D&D game when it's just not a popular thing these days

So...basically any way you decide to slice this shit pie, the devs come out looking like idiots.

 

[ArchAngel]

Aren't enough TB games already? Why is should matter if it is D&D or not, this generic fantasy is all the same.

Did you play both D:OS and KotC? I doubt it if you claim silly stuff like this.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

Is toroks an ad plant or a fanboy?

 

[prodigydancer]

Is toroks an ad plant or a fanboy?

The former (proof).

 

[pippin]

Oh boy.

 

[Whiran]

I gave the game a shot. I was wondering if it could be as bad as what was being said in this thread.

Turns out that it is as bad or even worse than what people have been writing here.

First, this game is nothing like D&D. Anyone who claims that it is has a very very very broad definition of truth. The game system is so... not D&D that I don't even know how this game retained the D&D license. The "this is not D&D" screaming from the game begins right at character creation and gets worse from there.

The gameplay mechanics are so boring. There have been comparisons to the Dragon Age games which is pretty fair however this turd is worse than Dragon Age. Take that however you want.

I tried the game with a friend. We figured what the heck it's free right? Yeah... I wouldn't even suggest to anyone to try it out. It's that disappointing.

If you like World of Warcraft style combat combined with really bad character creation (worse than World of Warcraft) combined with really bad story telling ,a really bad UI that doesn't explain much of anything combined with game mechanics that have nothing to do with D&D... then you might enjoy this game.

I wanted to like this game but... the design decisions that were made make that impossible. This is a poorly designed and implemented game.

 

[Renevent]

Tried it out last night...some thoughts:

-Character creation is pretty robust as far as looks/physical options, however there's only a handful of classes and as mentioned above other classes are tucked away as sub-class skill trees. I'm not completely opposed to this type of system but it certainly doesn't exude D&D.

-Campaign, at least the small part I played, is really exceptionally poor. I actually consider myself someone who can overlook shitty stories/presentation in RPG's and just play and have fun anyways...there's just no way I can stomach and push through in SC:L. Voice acting is stilted, animations/effects in cutscenes look like they are from a game 10 years ago, dialog is painful...it's really bad. Problem is the game won't even let me skip the dialog and just power through...I tried esc/clicking/space/etc and most of the dialog/VO has to be painfully endured.

-Gameplay itself is kinda ok...I'm not a purist or a stickler so the idea of a cooldown based more action orientated D&D experience doesn't bother me all that much...that being said it's just so clunky it's practically beyond redeemable. Characters are constantly sliding around and being pushed by other characters, melee attacks barely have any 'oomph', magic skill are unimpressive...it's just not done very well.

-I ended up flat-out giving up on SP/campaign about an hour in and switched to dungeon crawling. I played maybe 4-5 games online and got to level 4. This part is almost fun, at least the general idea and they almost get it right. I like the idea of playing randomly generated dungeon crawl mission with other people. The way the skill/class system is setup is pretty conducive to this as well...if you get a good group going it's fun having clerics heal folks, melee protecting wizards, etc. Yeah it's MMO style and I'm sure most people hate that shit, but it works for me.

That being said they aren't quite successful with it...the randomly generated missions have very little character. Most of the issues from SP obviously carry over, combat doesn't feel right with characters sliding around, melee attacks whiffing around, and just overall it feels sluggish and poorly implemented. The enemies slide around as well, get stuck against walls, and generally feel uninspired.

I did kinda start to have fun leveling up and collecting loot, though. I'm a sucker for that though and have enjoyed games like Loki just for the lootin' n levelin'. I might continue playing over the weekend since I have to work and have nothing else to play atm.

Anyways overall I'd rate the game shitty so far from what I've played.

 

[pippin]

Is that "classes as part of the skill tree" the same thing from DAO, where you could be a rogue/warrior/mage and become a ranger, arcane warrior or druid later on?

 

[ArchAngel]

Buy Underrail and play that instead...

 

[ArchAngel]

Is that "classes as part of the skill tree" the same thing from DAO, where you could be a rogue/warrior/mage and become a ranger, arcane warrior or druid later on?

No he got it wrong. 5e D&D has class specializations (something similar to kits like in BG2). They just didn't implement all classes but only few and implemented these class specializations as skill/spell trees which are not even exclusive to each other. In PnP your Rogue cannot be Assassin and Trickster at same time.

 

[getter77]

What I don't get is why no one makes a nice turn based D&D RPG since ToEE. The system is anyway turn based why is everyone so stuck with RTwP or whatever?

Well, there is Dungeons & Dragons: Tactics.

Would've done so much better if only it'd gotten even a PC port, let alone a base on the PC instead---now we've just gotta hope communal hackers can rally around it in some years as ppsspp gets more robust.

 

[Crichton]

What I don't get is why no one makes a nice turn based D&D RPG since ToEE. The system is anyway turn based why is everyone so stuck with RTwP or whatever?

Well, there is Dungeons & Dragons: Tactics.

Would've done so much better if only it'd gotten even a PC port, let alone a base on the PC instead---now we've just gotta hope communal hackers can rally around it in some years as ppsspp gets more robust.

http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/inde...inally-available-on-pc-impressions-itt.65716/

Back in the day I used another emulator without issue.


On topic: I installed this last night for a bit of Schadenfreude. Content-wise, it's pretty bad, ~NWN1 OC level of generic and awkward. As for the engine, it has lousy controls but looks OK-ish; the rules bear no real resemblance to any edition of D&D but that's not the problem. The problem is that it's impossible to use positioning to your advantage because your characters keep bouncing around instead of staying where you put them, which throws most tactics out the window; it rather reminds me of those Drakensang games.

I was initially excited about this game when all I knew was '5E D&D game with toolset', when I heard more about it, it moved down to ~$5/bundle fodder eventual purchase. Having played it, I think it's just best to steer clear entirely.

 

[Lhynn]

This game wouldnt be competitive even if it was free to play.

 

[Fry]

Character creation is pretty robust as far as looks/physical options, however there's only a handful of classes and as mentioned above other classes are tucked away as sub-class skill trees. I'm not completely opposed to this type of system but it certainly doesn't exude D&D.

Pretty much. Other than the fact they haven't implemented all the classes, I actually thought character creation was a decent CRPG translation of PnP. People bitching a ton about that seem to be unfamiliar with 5e.

The real problem with the game is it's piss easy and combat is terrible. Oh... and one save slot per character? WTF?

 

[ArchAngel]

Character creation is pretty robust as far as looks/physical options, however there's only a handful of classes and as mentioned above other classes are tucked away as sub-class skill trees. I'm not completely opposed to this type of system but it certainly doesn't exude D&D.

Pretty much. Other than the fact they haven't implemented all the classes, I actually thought character creation was a decent CRPG translation of PnP. People bitching a ton about that seem to be unfamiliar with 5e.

The real problem with the game is it's piss easy and combat is terrible. Oh... and one save slot per character? WTF?

WTF, I am familiar with 5e and character creation is not 5e. Not even close.

 

[Aoyagi]

OK, I tried it with no expectations and it turned out to be a nice little (probably) low-budged aRPG with decent writing and funny voice acting and player-created modules...

Come to think of it, it reminds me of Dungeon Siege III. I enjoyed that and I fully expect I'm a tiny minority for enjoying both games (DS3 more though).

 

[Kruno]

I played for 10 minutes and I couldn't stand it. It feels nothing like a D&D game, and it doesn't feel like an action game either. I don't really know what to class this game as.