Astral Rag
Arcane
- Joined
- Feb 1, 2012
- Messages
- 7,771
As far as I can tell this is still highly unoptimized and buggy. Maybe they'll manage to fix it eventually, who knows.
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I just tried this and went through the first 4-5 missions. What can I say, it's DK2, but not quite. I mean this as opposed to being a not-quite-DK3, which would require a bunch of new mechanics and gameplay additions. So far it has very similar creature and room types and the campaign is laid out almost exactly the same as in DK2.
Although it's supposed to be very buggy I haven't encountered anything gamebreaking yet, except one massive slowdown (probably caused by that memory leak or AI pathing issues or something that people have already mentioned).
What disappoints me the most is the lack of attention to detail not in terms of "finishing touches" (the very first thing I tried is picking up gold and making it rain, which doesn't work as it does in DK2 and neither does creature dropping, in terms of animations at least, the tooltips are unfinished, so is possession, and it's generally obvious the game shouldn't have been released yet, however those are the issues one could reasonably expect to get fixed), but basic things that I fear will never be fixed because the developers have either intended it that way or just consider it good enough. For example the creature animations aren't nearly as charming and competently done as in DK2 and they seem to lack a lot of the personality they had in DK2. This is something you either get or don't get. Also, most of the creature designs are more Warcraft-style than D&D-style, which I guess is just an aesthetic preference.
The map itself is really dark compared to DK2, the walls seem unnaturally straight compared to DK'2 wonky angles on each tile, and the mission maps have had a lot of open and semi-open spaces so far (which make it impossible to dig out neatly shaped rooms although the "replacement earth" construct helps a bit later on).
Despite everything this will probably be the first decent DK-like game in recent history when/if: it gets finished, it gets at least one expansion, and it gets some kind of a GOTY-like "this is now fully finished, all the bugs are gone, everything is as polished as possible, all the features are in, and you get the game and the expansion(s) in one pack" edition. Do note that I have no idea what the developers are actually planning for the game or if the base game itself will even get finished, since I haven't been following the Kickstarter at all*, but this is what the game needs to be considered a success, and if it ever does, I would seriously recommend it.
One nasty side effect of officially releasing the game in this state is that it will hinder the chances of a proper multiplayer community developing - it will most likely fizzle out and when/if the game is finally "done" there will be no one left.
* - I just looked the Kickstarter forum up and it has so few posts that it seems even the backers have forgotten about the game existing which doesn't exactly bode well
I stopped playing at about 2/3 through because I couldn't load my save anymore (the game just started lagging out on loading every time) so I have no idea what the last few missions are like. I'd recommend that everyone just forgets about the game existing for at least a short while because right now you'll probably just be disappointed by the immense not-fully-realized potential. The patches do seem to be coming at a steady pace (which is to be expected since they released it in such an unfinished state, so the development is just following its regular course), but there's no guarantee that the wildly optimistic scenario from my previous post will ever happen.Soo... Better off playing deeper dungeons again? Or still worth a single playthrough?
I stopped playing at about 2/3 through because I couldn't load my save anymore (the game just started lagging out on loading every time) so I have no idea what the last few missions are like. I'd recommend that everyone just forgets about the game existing for at least a short while because right now you'll probably just be disappointed by the immense not-fully-realized potential. The patches do seem to be coming at a steady pace (which is to be expected since they released it in such an unfinished state, so the development is just following its regular course), but there's no guarantee that the wildly optimistic scenario from my previous post will ever happen.Soo... Better off playing deeper dungeons again? Or still worth a single playthrough?
What, actually? I enjoyed DK back when it was fresh, but replaying it now gets me bored rather quickly.It even adds some things on its own.