Review Going Down to Hinterland

Jason · Jan 1, 2009

Tags: Hinterland; Tilted Mill

JarlFrank had a go at Tilted Mill's <b><a href="http://www.tiltedmill.com/hinterland/">Hinterland</a></b> to find out what this RPG/strategy hybrid is all about.
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<a href="http://www.rpgcodex.net/content.php?id=185">Read on...</a>

LCJr. · Jan 2, 2009

Just to elaborate on a few things. To me this game doesn't even rate as an ARPG just an action game. A characters only stats are Attack, Defense and Health. There's a little experience bar for each one and they increase through use. Hit your enemies enough times and your attack improves. Get hit enough times your defense and health increase. Outside of combat levels have no effect. Level 1 farmer produces as much food as a level 10 farmer.

One thing really annoyed me was pathfinding/collision. It's present in Mosby's so I can't say if it's a Torque problem or a Tilted Mill problem. When a character comes into contact with a scenery object or another character they almost completely stop moving. It's annoying and sometimes fatal. For example your trying to flee and somebody touches a rock and their killed by the pursuing monster. Or you engage in combat against a strong monster and your followers get stuck on your back and contribute nothing to the fight.

The town building pretty much lacks any kind of strategy. Priority number one produce food. Duh. After that it depends on who shows up and what you can afford or have met the pre-requisites for. Getting the higher level buildings is again a matter of random chance and not strategy. Like in Jarl's example if you want a dragon breeder you have find a dragon egg. Wizards require an Arcane Tome, a High Priest a Holy Relic, etc. Being at the mercy of a random treasure generator is not strategy.

The game's good for two or three playthroughs and you'll have seen all it has to offer. If you're looking for a $20 ARPG with light strategy you'd do far better with Soldak's Depths of Peril.

Kraszu · Jan 2, 2009

LCJr. said:
Just to elaborate on a few things. To me this game doesn't even rate as an ARPG just an action game.

I doubt that actioncodex would agree whit that.

JarlFrank · Jan 4, 2009

LCJr. said:
Getting the higher level buildings is again a matter of random chance and not strategy. Like in Jarl's example if you want a dragon breeder you have find a dragon egg. Wizards require an Arcane Tome, a High Priest a Holy Relic, etc. Being at the mercy of a random treasure generator is not strategy.

I found the randomness to be annoying on many fronts. There's no real logic to the game. Resources are scattered randomly on the map, the kinds of enemies that guard these resources are random, the people who visit your town are random, the quests the king gives you are random. And not random in a logical way. Just plain fucking random. High Priests visiting your town at the beginning of a game, while you don't even have the remote chance of recruiting them, is one good example for that.
Hinterland is a perfect example of a game where random generation really fucked things up.

Masterr · Aug 19, 2009

Just to elaborate on a few things. To me this game doesn't even rate as an ARPG just an action game. A characters only stats are Attack, Defense and Health. There's a little experience bar for each one and they increase through use. Hit your enemies enough times and your attack improves. Get hit enough times your defense and health increase. Outside of combat levels have no effect. Level 1 farmer produces as much food as a level 10 farmer.

+1
really agree
interface is nice. lots of other interesting things, yeah... but all in all the game needs to be given another brush
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