Thea 2: The Shattering

[Grokalibre]

Hey I'm the sucker on this one, I bought it.
I only played the first one 5-1 minutes so I can't compare them.
Game is pretty limited at the moment. It feels a bit like a shit roguelike cos your peasants are always burning through their stocks of wood & food.
Not much in terms of town development afaik so far.
The interface could be optimized to require less clicks per action, it's a bit micro intensive to do not so much imho, especially as soon as you start managing several groups.

Obviously it's far from being finished in its current state.
I dont feel robbed at all but I encourage waiting for those who want a fully enjoyable game.

 

[HeatEXTEND]

It feels a bit like a shit roguelike cos your peasants are always burning through their stocks of wood & food.
Not much in terms of town development afaik so far.
The interface could be optimized to require less clicks per action, it's a bit micro intensive to do not so much imho, especially as soon as you start managing several groups.

yep that's Thea alright

 

[Taka-Haradin puolipeikko]

 

[Life of the Party]

 

[Dickie]

After 5 months in Early Access, we can now officially confirm, that the release date for 1.0 has been set to Monday 13th May!

Please don't be terrible.

https://steamcommunity.com/games/606230/announcements/detail/1627398152346997781

 

[Jinn]

I enjoyed the first game pretty well, but this looks a little too similar to warrant a Day 1 purchase for me. Really wish they would have ditched the card combat for something more tactical. Had they done that, it would have been a definite Day 1 for me. I hope it's good and they get some good sales on this, though. Kind of feel bad for them considering how little attention this seems to have garnered. Look forward to dex brother impressions in the near future.

 

[PocketMine]

After 5 months in Early Access, we can now officially confirm, that the release date for 1.0 has been set to Monday 13th May!

Please don't be terrible.

https://steamcommunity.com/games/606230/announcements/detail/1627398152346997781

Thea 2 evolved much since the first early access build in december. Basicly the december build had only combat system implemented properly rest was just placeholders. Current Thea 2 build is already better then Thea : awakening IMHO.

 

[Damned Registrations]

After 5 months in Early Access, we can now officially confirm, that the release date for 1.0 has been set to Monday 13th May!

Please don't be terrible.

https://steamcommunity.com/games/606230/announcements/detail/1627398152346997781

Thea 2 evolved much since the first early access build in december. Basicly the december build had only combat system implemented properly rest was just placeholders. Current Thea 2 build is already better then Thea : awakening IMHO.

In what ways is it better? I browsed some steam reviews and it sounded bad- that they've replced the open world go at your own pace and reward exploration theme of things with a series of islands, each one higher difficulty than the last with no reason to skip one. Reminds me of what I hated about Starbound. Someone missed the entire point of having an open world and threw it in the trash to ensure everyone would see all the content in their first playthrough.

 

[Reinhardt]

It's released. Sort of.

 

[Wulfric Pinewood]

Great, go buy it and tell us how dissapointed You are.

 

[Falksi]

Looks wank.

 

[HeatEXTEND]

Somebody buy it already and take one for the team

 

[Reinhardt]

I actually have it, but considering how fast they release new versions and my backlog it will take some time.

 

[PocketMine]

After 5 months in Early Access, we can now officially confirm, that the release date for 1.0 has been set to Monday 13th May!

Please don't be terrible.

https://steamcommunity.com/games/606230/announcements/detail/1627398152346997781

Thea 2 evolved much since the first early access build in december. Basicly the december build had only combat system implemented properly rest was just placeholders. Current Thea 2 build is already better then Thea : awakening IMHO.

In what ways is it better? I browsed some steam reviews and it sounded bad- that they've replced the open world go at your own pace and reward exploration theme of things with a series of islands, each one higher difficulty than the last with no reason to skip one. Reminds me of what I hated about Starbound. Someone missed the entire point of having an open world and threw it in the trash to ensure everyone would see all the content in their first playthrough.

Its still an open world game divided into biomes by sea. Main problem with thea 1 type of open world was that inevitably sooner or later hardest roaming monsters would find your settlement and ruin it. This was my main problem with thea 1 expansion with its level 15 roaming monster groups. Thea 2 gives you option to settle on starting island where hardest encounters are much easier but is missing best resource types or you dont even build settlement and can spend all your time roaming game world. You can even build 2 different settlements on different islands if you want.

You dont need to travel on all of islands i usualy visit just 2 on average per game/win. Each island has different enviroment, faction villages and events. For example there are 3 posible factions on 1st island but only slavyans vilage is guaranteed to spawn. Some playthroughs you meet all 3 factions and on some only one. I dont know why you think you can see all content in one playthrough.

 

[Dickie]

I've been poking around in the XML files, and I see a lot of stuff that didn't quite make it into the game (yet?), like achievements. The achievements are stuff like "win 15 challenges with only one person" or "get 5 pets" and you get rewards for completing them. Right now, it's mostly just a small bit of random equipment, but a lot of them seem to have skills that you can get from completing them, but those are commented out. If I recall, the solo challenge achievement has a skill attached to it that adds to all your shielding. The 5 pets one looks like it gives you a really good horse, similar to taking the 4-legged friend god card at the start.

There's also another victory type, Achievement Victory, that's to be tied to completing a certain number of achievements.

There's also a handful of rituals that are commented out, so I wonder if they'll be added to the game. I forget now what they did, but it wasn't too hard to figure out the couple I looked at. I found it odd that there are only 3 rituals in the game, but that bonuses to rituals were a thing. Why would you need that if the only rituals you can use regularly have such a low time investment already?

I wonder if this stuff will be added to the game later. I saw that Steam achievements will be added in a future patch, so I wonder if that will also include the in-game achievements.

 

[PocketMine]

Bonuses to rituals make sense since you can perform more then one ritual of same type per turn with high ritual talented people like elfs or goblins. You need more rituals per turn to raise spirit after battle for whole group after hard spiritual encounters (usualy you need 3-5 rituals for full recovery of big expeditionary group depends on spirit dmg taken) or if your whole group gets cursed one curse removal ritual will remove only 2-3 curses you will need more rituals to clear all curses.

I dont know about achievments as there are no in-game or steam achievments yet but the Achievment Victory as you describe it sounds similar to Domination Victory that is implemented.

 

[lightbane]

Is this game also as "kid-friendly" as the first one? As in, one of every 3 events has something bad happening to children to the point of hilarity.

 

[thesheeep]

Is this game also as "kid-friendly" as the first one? As in, one of every 3 events has something bad happening to children to the point of hilarity.

Well, I sent one of my children on a mysterious journey when it grew up (you basically can select what they will become, depending on their stats, or you take the "mysterious journey")... it came back as a Goblin.
Goblins are awesome Gatherers and "shamans", though, so that's fine.

 

[PocketMine]

Amount of "kid-friendly" event was toned down a bit but its replaced by growing up events. Kids can desert ,vanish, come back as failed classes or completely changed(fat rat,ghost,wraith). Its partialy influenced by your choice and partialy on luck stat they have.

 

[thesheeep]

Is it just me or is Thea 2 extremely formulaic in comparison to the first game?
In the first game, I remember happily exploring my surroundings while also taking care of my village, but you could essentially play as you want.

In Thea 2, you get lured into thinking that you can settle anywhere because there are such distinct islands and have different experiences on each of them, but you couldn't be more wrong.
If you even try to make your settlement anywhere except the starter island, you will be rushed by the Lightbringers, against which you have absolutely no defense. In 90% of cases, you only get a "faith" combat option, and unless you are pretty far into the game, you won't have the means to win that. Party wipe.
So the only working strategy is settling on the starter island and slowly (oh, boy, ever so slowly) increasing in power until you eventually have a team that can actually deal with faith challenges - and then you can go explore other islands.

Unfortunately, the islands are all absolutely tiny in comparison to the Thea 1 world, so there isn't really too much to see, either. You just go there mostly for the different resources (which also never change, every island on every playthrough will have the same resources, only their locations are random).

The combat is also a mess, what a downgrade in comparison to the first game, in which I really liked the combat.
You get a shitload of abilities, but the only thing that really matters is armor, health and damage - everything else you'd only use if you have already used the highest armor/health/damage units. I think later in the game, when your non-standard abilities have actually become useful, it might open up, but that's a tad late for enjoying a game.
And because it's such a mess, you just auto-resolve 90% of challenges - which ends up about as well as you would yourself.

I'm barely 10 hours in, but I already have trouble finding the motivation to continue.
The starter island has become boring, the other islands still require me to build up a team of high-faith characters (of course, levelling children up is mostly random so you can't really plan for that, either). So meanwhile I just gather, craft and wait.
The only thing I really like are the events themselves, as those are still rather unique among games.

 

[Damned Registrations]

You also have the option of talking down the lightbringers, and getting a bunch of social peope early on isn't that hard. The combat is better than it seems at first glance, it depends a lot on what classes you have though, because most of the equipment abilities are locked behind way too hgih tier materials you'll never use. But you can still do like the spear premptive strike things, splash damage, etc. And the weakening abilities are very strong. I like that making a spear with gems lets you use it in mental fights as well as physical ones, it's a cool aspect.

The two things it's really missing are the random equipment bonuses that made crafting in the first game much more enjoyable, and a better incentive to build a strong settlement, or multiple settlements. As it stands, you get all the best materials from quest rewards anyways, so there's really no reason to try and set up some settlement to ever so slowly grind out middle tier gear. In my first game I set up my town on the goblin island, rightly assuming that bone would be versatile enough to do lots of shit compared to most other resources. It never amounted to much though. I had a huge gathering radius on the town, and lots of food, but I couldn't get past the T3 single type materials without an insane amount of coal and labour, so I was better off taking my party around to loot shit. Towns can give children better stats and therefore upgrade options, but giving them xp is WAY better since they keep their skills when their level resets. Towns improve crafting rate a ton, but you won't need to craft a ton of things if you focus on high quality resources. And quests give you new party members much faster than a village will, since you get way more events on the field moving around.

I think it'll shape up eventually, but it's still just not tuned very well mechanics wise. The stories are as good as ever though, and there seem to be way more of them. And they're loclised to various islands, so if you're sick of goblin quests you can go hang with the dwarves or orcs or whatever. Thats the one part of the islands thing I really like.

 

[thesheeep]

Yeah, guess I'll come back to it in some months.

 

[Dickie]

If you just want a ton of guys, sail around until a wind demon (can't remember how it's spelled, Viatroviec?) shows up and make friends with him. If he joins your team, you can gain another of those demons almost every time you have that event, which seems to be pretty often. I usually have 4-5 of them without even trying, since I explore the islands from the sea to avoid getting gang-fucked by light bringers. The wind demons are OK for gathering and crafting materials with the town bonuses.

Crafting higher tier materials is so fucking tedious the way you gotta set up production chains to get to them that I'm not sure if you're even supposed to. To try to alleviate this, I put tier 4 bones as a super rare spawn on the bone island to see if it unbalanced things. I've never seen more than one instance of it on the island since I changed that, so it seems OK.

I also experimented with letting the tier one stone (sandstone) be an option for converting to the tier three stone (obsidian), and it was still a super pain in the ass to get enough obsidian to do stuff with that or to try to make enough tier four stone to do anything. You need quite a few guys gathering and cooking to keep the supply steady. The composite resources are even more hell to set up as a supply chain. I'm thinking the idea was for you to never have much tier 4+ materials, except what you get from popping light bringer squads in red challenges. They spawn so fast that you could never kill them all, but it just feels like playing whack-a-mole. Maybe the plan really was for you to build a town and click the end turn button 1,500 times.

I do like how moddable the game is. You could fairly easily change one of the islands to be nothing but tier 10 challenges and tier 4 materials, make children get 0.4 XP every turn or have a bite attack, or change building bonuses or essence thresholds to make half the buildings worth the effort to build them. You can even change the resource research tree just by editing an XML file and it'll draw it automatically. I'm just wondering if modding will take off once Steam Workshop is integrated and if some mod will make the game more fun.

 

[Damned Registrations]

Hopefully the devs themselves tweak a bunch of those numbers themselves for the sake of the game's popularity. Modding is only going to take off if the game itself has a playerbase to begin with. And some stuff is just a total no brainer, like the ROI for buildings that give you materials, or the trading house that never gives you trading events (might be a bug?) or the pathetically low bonuses to crafting you get from a forge compared to improving your idol. I kept researching new buildings thinking 'oh surely this one will be ok, that last one was just a fluke that it was totally worthless' and was disappointed pretty much every time. The library is kind of worth it, and the playground makes it easier to get witches, though I really dislike that you'd need to bring the child back to town on the turn they grow up, it should instead give xp over time or slowly add stats or something. Everything else is a waste to even research, let alone build.

 

[Dickie]

Hopefully the devs themselves tweak a bunch of those numbers themselves for the sake of the game's popularity. Modding is only going to take off if the game itself has a playerbase to begin with. And some stuff is just a total no brainer, like the ROI for buildings that give you materials,

Yeah, the only resource building that is worth anything is the lumber mill if you have absolutely no wood around to get 1-2 wood per turn to burn. Seriously, why the fuck would you ever build a building to get 1 tier 2 metal per turn?

or the trading house that never gives you trading events (might be a bug?)

I think the trading post is what causes the cloth merchants to show up that have nothing good to trade. You can rob them and then they never come back. Not for sure that building causes this event. Don't forget that the trading post also seems to give you a single tier 1 resource per turn. Whoopee!

or the pathetically low bonuses to crafting you get from a forge compared to improving your idol.

The forge can give up to +15 to crafting, but you have to use some metal essence to get the SUBSKILL-BUILDING_ADD_STRONG_CRAFTING skill instead of SUBSKILL-BUILDING_ADD_CRAFTING. The warehouse is similar for gathering, except you need gem or leather essence to get "strong gathering."

I kept researching new buildings thinking 'oh surely this one will be ok, that last one was just a fluke that it was totally worthless' and was disappointed pretty much every time.

Yeah, my favorite part was that the herbalist hut doesn't even give you herbs. I even checked the XML file to make sure it wasn't just that I didn't try the right essence.

The library is kind of worth it, and the playground makes it easier to get witches, though I really dislike that you'd need to bring the child back to town on the turn they grow up, it should instead give xp over time or slowly add stats or something. Everything else is a waste to even research, let alone build.

I always drop/leave my kids in town to gather or craft materials or whatever, so that works for me, except when my adventuring party starts popping out kids when across the world. I'm not sure if you could easily make the playground give XP to kids. It's easy to do something like make a building, the school for example, give everyone XP per turn.