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KickStarter Wolcen: Lords of Mayhem - open world isometric action-RPG

Perkel

Arcane
Joined
Mar 28, 2014
Messages
15,804
They are going POE with it when it comes to monetization later on.
DLC/content will be free while mircro will be used only for skins etc.

Looks like this will be proper challenger to POE, no online lag bullshit to start with.
I wonder if they will later remove sticker price when micro will start rolling.
 

luj1

You're all shills
Vatnik
Joined
Jan 2, 2016
Messages
12,869
Location
Eastern block
This should be good once they add more of everything. Expand the passive tree a little bit, make it less mundane. Add more acts, more difficulty levels. The 'town management' thing looks awful, I hope it plays a narrow role.
 

Perkel

Arcane
Joined
Mar 28, 2014
Messages
15,804
my friends list, game seems to be popular:

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Joined
Dec 24, 2018
Messages
1,783
Alright I bought it. If it sucks I'm blaming the codex.

Enjoy. And keep us posted please.
For now the servers are fucked. Can play offline but I'm to tired to read what the differences are. Will catch some shut eye, and maybe they'll unfuck them at night.

As far as I know you can mod offline, but not online. Characters are separate for each mode. It's unclear if offline characters can be used for "open" multiplayer with other offline characters.
 

King Crispy

Too bad I have no queen.
Patron
Staff Member
Joined
Feb 16, 2008
Messages
1,876,560
Location
Future Wasteland
Strap Yourselves In
I watched the one dude who wears the cap's "review" of the beta of this game, and it looked okay I guess, but the one thing that stood out to me is the janky/stuttery movement of the character him/herself. Also the NPCs walking around in the area he was in were doing that whole slide-walking thing and often glitched out and teleported a few inches on the screen during his live stream.

Is it still like that? I would think that would be the very first thing you'd get perfect in a "next-gen" Diablo clone.
 

Hobo Elf

Arcane
Joined
Feb 17, 2009
Messages
13,997
Location
Platypus Planet
I watched the one dude who wears the cap's "review" of the beta of this game, and it looked okay I guess, but the one thing that stood out to me is the janky/stuttery movement of the character him/herself. Also the NPCs walking around in the area he was in were doing that whole slide-walking thing and often glitched out and teleported a few inches on the screen during his live stream.

Is it still like that? I would think that would be the very first thing you'd get perfect in a "next-gen" Diablo clone.

Yeah the movement feels a bit odd initially, but I got used to it pretty fast. It doesn't have seamless 360 degree character rotation but it snaps into different set angles. Even then the combat still feels pretty silky smooth because of how responsive everything else and how well animated the game is. So far it's pretty fun and looking at the passive tree with the wheel turning gimmickery is making me want to see what kind of character building possibilities lie in wait. The voice acting is surprisingly good too couple by decent writing and surprisingly awesome music.
So far one of the main criticisms people have justifiably had is that it just adds elements of all other ARPGs, but I think the way they weave the parts together works, and they do add their own improvements imo. Like Skills level up in the same way as PoE, but this unlocks new Runes ala Diablo 3. However as your skills level up you can equip multiple runes per skill which gives them even more tuning potential.
 

Daedalos

Arcane
The Real Fanboy
Joined
Apr 18, 2007
Messages
5,559
Location
Denmark
loving this. playing a warrior with a YUGE greatsword swinging son of a bitch. it feels GUD, impactful and meaty when u slay the fucking monstars and they fly everywhere.

the story is decent enough, the voice acting and writing are surprisingly good.
 

Bara

Arcane
Joined
Apr 2, 2018
Messages
1,320
Could just be a bug but characters with beards are really janky in cutscenes.

It was like his mouth would keep moving but not the beard.
 

RoBoBOBR

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Oct 29, 2012
Messages
695
Really annoying problem where clicking on item's name wont actually pick it up, but rather queue a movement command. Happens constantly, in some cases it takes 5+ attempts for the pick up to work.
 
Joined
Nov 23, 2017
Messages
4,010
When did Hack & Slash start getting called ARPG? I mean I get that it's a sub-genre, but ARPGs aren't just combat focused games like Diablo, they're just normal RPGs with real-time combat. At least from what I've seen of this, this is a hack and slash like Diablo and Nox and has always been that.

Evolution:

Diablo like --> Hack and Slash --> ARPG

I prefer Diablo like since Hack and Slash can be used for also fixed character with no progression games.

I wouldn't say that's the evolution of it.

ARPGs are just regular RPGs with real-time combat...like Arcanum. Arcanum has a action based combat system in it, but it's not a combat focused game. Same thing with Vamipre: The Masquerade - Bloodlines game. These are just normal role-playing games that happen to have an action based combat system as opposed to a turn-based one. Hence they are Action-Role Playing Games.

A Hack and Slash is a sub-genre of the ARPG (I guess it wouldn't necessarily have to be, but real time combat is what it's been associated with in video games since Diablo came out) that is purely combat focused like the original Diablo game is.

Diablo-like is like a term people didn't actually use because Hack and Slash and Dungeon Crawler were terms already around before Diablo that people used to describe Diablo when it came out, and then later games like it. I don't know, maybe some people called them this but I don't remember this being a term I ever heard or saw back in the '90s when Diablo was new...at least not when talking about the genre this style of game falls into, as opposed to a more casual conversational type thing.
 
Joined
Aug 10, 2012
Messages
5,869
Playing as a melee character and the combat feels meaty and satisfying. Unfortunately, there are too many cutscenes and they are too cringe inducing.

Runs well and looks good on my 8 year old i5, if it manages to keep me from falling asleep like pretty much every other diablo clone it will have already won. I like it that there is a more active element to the game in rolls (although rolls look remarkably stupid in motion) and the skill modifiers could be potentially interesting. The interface needs a lot of work though, like being able to sort your inventory, etc.
 

Hobo Elf

Arcane
Joined
Feb 17, 2009
Messages
13,997
Location
Platypus Planet
The first act boss was pretty tough. Got him down on my 3rd try, after I tweaked my abilities a bit. My advice is to not sleep too much on survi passive nodes like I did.
 

RoBoBOBR

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Oct 29, 2012
Messages
695
Played a bit yesterday, some random impressions:
- controls are somewhat janky, left click seem to always prioritize movement command, rather than attack or item pickup. Had to constantly use Shift to stop and attack instead of running into a monster or circling around it. feels less refined than Grim Dawn in that regard.
- melee is satisfying, esp. 2H
- some animations look good, some not -- like the stance of female characters, that look ridiculous
- graphics look good
- mobs respawn in cleared areas
- story is meh so far, so are cutscenes
 

Van-d-all

Erudite
Joined
Jan 18, 2017
Messages
1,557
Location
Standin' pretty. In this dust that was a city.
So they fixed the servers ~3h after launch so I get to play it for 2h or so. It's decent. Outside of graphics (I don't really care much about) it didn't hook me as something particularly good tough.

EDIT:
First and foremost the classless system is a gimmick-y. While there might be no classes, active abilities are hard tied to either melee, ranged or magic weapons. You can switch weapons and equipment, the stats are mostly ambiguous and you can respec any time (although I gained levels faster than money I'd need to do that...), but if you had a vision of spell casting sword fighter or the like - forget it. Similarly the passive tree, as uninspired as it might be in it's % gains, is also similarly divided into RGB (melee/ranged/magic) orbs, so while it's possible to pick any ones you like, melee weapon damage for instance just isn't really useful for archer or a mage. Effectively - yes you can divide your XP (the various types of it, since there are few) among the various classes weapon types, but why would you is beyond me - it doesn't really synergize, and requires equipment change at the very least, and I'd expect that later on being mediocre in 2 (or all 3) will make the game needlessly harder than just specializing in 1.
There are two 1H weapons that allow to be mixed with 1H melee - pistols (ranged obviously) & catalysts (magic) that allow to use two kinds of skills at once.

Animations are pretty slick, but the attack speeds seem rather slow. Swinging a greatsword takes quite some time, same goes for running - you can see the model swinging it's legs yet the movement looks as if it was cranked down to make the maps last longer (and no, I have the game running @60fps all the time). The maps themselves are rather small (but I've seen just 4 or 5) and from atrociously tunneled start (The first "city" is literally a single intersection...) they turn into more room-like spaces split up to smaller cells with impassable obstacles, with an occasional outgoing tunnel.

It's quite important to note that enemies have rather tiny hitboxes and require precise aiming (I even had a bug where a single enemy was untargettable at all and I had to kill it wit AOE...) . The AI also seems to struggle at times to line the enemies for attack so they just run off in semi random direction or stand in place as if dazed. Even despite their models often overlapping each other.

The main point of combat being enjoyable lies pretty much in a more arcade playstyle with dashes and dodge rolls, but again, early on everything is so slow and telegraphed it's hardly a challenge and no match even for regular TPP ARPGs like Nier or Dragon's Dogma. Dying enemies have a bit more feedback than in most H&S games - they get ragdolled or utterly destroyed that makes it look a lot less stiff than usual. Still, don't expect TPP ARPG levels of cutting limbs and what not.

The plot is just another "you are the chosen one" but I guess it fits the power fantasy of H&S. There are loads of cutscenes in two various types - the illustrator animated stills and the engine based ones, both looking rather mediocre. Given the basic plot, cringeworthy characters and lackluster voiceover they seemed like wasted resources, but I guess normies like those.

The sounds are pretty good and fit what's going on the screen, the music is also quite atmospheric, although not really memorable.

To sum it up, a good looking H&S with enjoyable combat given it's reasonable price, but if it was supposed to be a market changer, it sure as hell doesn't seem like it for me.
 
Last edited:

abija

Prophet
Joined
May 21, 2011
Messages
2,891
Other than obvious stuff like story being whatever, you didn't play enough to form an opinion. You didn't even bother to read the whole passive tree and come up with shit like "classless system is a gimmick".
 

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