Grunker
RPG Codex Ghost
WELCOME TO GRUNKER'S HOUSE OF FIRST IMPRESSIONS
Get a cup of coffee off the stove, get your best chair, lean back. You're in for, like, 50 lines of random first impressions delivered from the greatest orator on the Codex (if great oration equals adding superflous adjectives to boring factual text). Here we go:
Be advised that these impressions are formed on the basis of playing 4 campaign maps and dick else, so basically they're completely useless. You have been warned.
THE MOTHERFUCKING SWEET
- Remember how we got 16 years of Dungeon Keeper 2 clones that had little if anything to do with Dungeon Keeper 2? War for the Overworld makes up for this by literally being Dungeon Keeper 2. No, I'm serious.
- It's all here. You build a Workshop (NO EXCUSE ME 'FOUNDRY'), you get access to Trolls (NO EXCUSE ME 'CHUNDERS') from your Portal (NO EXCUSE ME 'GATEWAY'). They build traps and doors and stuff.
- Yes. All. This game seems like Dungeon Keeper 2: 2. As in, Dungeon Keeper 2: The Sequal. Or maybe even Dungeon Keeper 2: The Total Conversion Map Pack.
- There are a few (so far) welcome additions. There are two REALLY good ones. The first is a division between 'minions' and 'beasts'. Minions are your usual Dungeon Keeper 2 dudes. They come from a Portal (SORRY DID I SAY PORTAL I MEANT GATEWAY OBVIOUSLY PLEASE DON'T SUE ME EA). In addition to what you know them for (they train, they fight, they sleep, they have paydays), they also won't eat Chicken (OOPS MEANT MICRO PIGLETS) unless said culinary treats are cooked at a Tavern. If you run out of piglets you can throw some goblins (eh... GNARLINGS) into the stew instead. Pretty funny and very DK2. Then there are beasts. They come from a Beast Pen (another kind ofPortal FUCKING GATEWAY OR WHATEVER and can't train, don't need sleep, don't need pay etc. They can only fight and explore. However they still need food, which they eat directly from the Hatchery Slaughterpen. The other welcome addition is an expanded Rally-flag system, including an "IMPASSE"-flag which wards off your minions and Imps whatever-they're-called, the worker-dudes. Meaning you don't lose them to heedless retardo-AI expansion. Basically they enable you to make borders around enemy territory so your imps don't wander aimlessly into death in an attempt to knock 2 hit points off a 500-hit point enemy wall.
THE P. GOOD
- Graphics are servicable. They lack that certain je-ne-sais-quoi of DK2, that consistant, polished style and coherent theme. But this is to be expected from a studio started by a 16-year-old and designed by dedicated fans almost. What is there is sufficient. It basically looks like DK2 with less codified style, but some fun ideas. Your [redacted], sorry Chunders, forge by banging their stone-heads on the anvil. Oculus' (beholders) shoot lazer-beams from their eyes. Cultists (formerly Warlocks) mumble to themselves while researching in the archives, sometimes about uncovering ancient lore THAT WILL SHAKE THE UNIVERSE, sometimes wondering where they left that piece of toast (Cultists are by far my favourite unit so far thematically).
- Richard Ridings returns and he is great as ever. His cliché malice is still twisted with bizarre humor a la "one of your minions cannot show the proper papers" or "your minions have elected a spokesperson... I suggest you kill him before he demands a collective pay-raise." The interplay between you (theKeeper DarkUnderlord Underlord) and Richard's character is also more featured in the plot, with your opponents accusing you of being a slave to him as your minions are to you and such. Might be further explored down the line.
- The core gameplay is by and large untouched, but with much-needed additions. Enemy walls take forever to break down (a massive multiplayer improvement). Shrines have been implemented, which are neutral rooms that can be taken over and provide passive boni (like faster breakdown of enemy walls). A new type of construction has been added, which are sort of a hybrid between Rooms and Traps, called Constructables. An example is the 'Underminer' which is a bomb. It can be placed anywhere in neutral or friendly territory, costs a lot of gold, and requires 5 seconds of Imp-work to be complete. Once complete, you light the fuse, it channels for 3 seconds and then blasts every piece of wall adjacent to it down. So this is the new form of enemy wall destruction and creates some risk/reward play. Instead of costing mana, traps now "lock" some of your mana bar instead. Same with the summon minion spell: it doesn't get more expensive, instead it locks part of your mana bar. Picking up minions does the same thing, meaning there's now a lock on pick-up abuse. There are many other such small tweaks to the core DK2 gameplay that are welcome.
- Other nice additions include new wall types (like Brimstone that can't be removed by Imps but explodes violently when Undermined), and more structured returning mechancis, like Endless Gold Sources (remember the purple rock from DK2 that was basically gold you could mine endlessly? It is now a shrine that must be controlled by a player and fought for).
- One of the maps I played on was FUCK-HUEG. There's certainly room for expansion of the DK2 formula here. The map was big enough that it could have been the basis for a good 4-player FFA.
- Let me just re-iterate for the last time: THIS GAME IS ACTUAL DUNGEON KEEPER. No nonsense, no faggotry, no concessions. If you know Dungeon Keeper 2, having War for the Overworld in your hands feels like coming home. It's that close. Like, even Artifacts/Treasures are here, you imps carry them to the Library ('scuse me Archives), they are slowly identified, and provide a one-time use bonus (like +happiness) or more creative permanent shit (like the ability to summon über spirit-imps that can't seize enemy territory).
THE MEH
- Map design so far has been pretty boring. Three tutorial-grade maps and the FUCK-HUEG map which, while impressive, was p. boring to play. I hope it gets better. Even DK2 had some fun starting maps.
- Icons are shit and interface handle pretty poorly. Everything's basically copied from DK2, but with small niggles. Like clicking on the UI sometimes doesn't work, and you click through it on the terrain beneath. Or Icons look like DK2 but without the subtle touches.
- Like DK2, it seems the devs had a hard time balancing the game. With no difficulty settings, I expect this game will be very easy for some, and very hard for others.
- The colour saturation of the game is very bleak, meaning that we're a far cry from DK2's heavily saturated models. Combined with confused and inconsistent art style, the end result is that the aesthetic of WftO is... bland. The definition of the word, actually.
- The writing tries SOOOOOO hard to be Dungeon Keeper 2. However, as so many things created by fans, the end result is mirage. A mirror image. Something that looks and talks the part, but ultimately it is uncanny valley-like in its failure to actually BE what it mimics. In other words: writing is fine, but it has no identity of its own so far, instead being satisfied to play at being Dungeon Keeper 2.
- There's a leveling tree. You develop "Sins" in the Archive (formerly Library), which are like Talent points. You spent them to learn new traps, rooms, constructables and spells. It's a superflous system, really, but it's not really bad either. I suspect it might function better in multiplayer.
THE BAD
- Optimization is shit. My computer is old - granted - but with 8GB of DDR2 RAM, a Radeon 4870 and plenty of processing power, I should still be able to run a game that for all intends and purposes looks like DK2 in a higher resolution, on my PC. I can, but only if I turn off Anisotropic Filtering and dial back the texture size. And then I still get lags after a while. The game seems to suffer from memory leak, which compounds if you tab in and out of it. I get the best results with dialed back settings and no tabbing. Even with that however, the game does not run in a satisfactory manner. I suspect your results will be better if you have a computer that is more up to the task than mine.
- During the FUCK-HUEG map, the V/O of the opposing Dungeon Keeper kept looping (not a bug) three different lines. Since the map took me so long because I suck at this game, I probably heard "PLEASE LEAVE MY DUNGEON, OR I WILL BE FORCED TO REACT" somewhere between 50 and six million times. This is the sort of polish-lack I'm talking about.
- A few bugs hint at some troubles here. When I loaded a save earlier, half of the map (which I had explored) was suddenly unexplored. The game remembered everything I'd actually done (mobs killed, stuff built), it just wiped my exploration.
- Lack of content-polish. While the game seems to be fairly problem-free so far, and while all mechanics are implemented in a satisfactory manner, the actual content doesn't seem incredibly polished. Map objectives are sometimes a little tedious to achieve, content can be a little unbalanced (one map can have a literal no-brainer objective followed by a "boss-fight" with a lord that takes two rounds of 10 fully healed minions to take down). There's a trap called Blade Lotus which is supposed to open a big bladed trap that unfolds and slices/dices, but all it does is a bunch of blades emerge from the ground, stay static and damage the enemy a little.
- In a baffling move, Subterranean Games has removed the stun from minions when you drop them. I suppose they think the new mana-lock from picking up minions makes up for abuse... but seriously. You can pick up minions and throw them down and they're ready to fight instantly. You can't pickup minions engaged in a fight though, so the potential for abuse is small, I guess. You also have a new spell to return minions to the dungeon, but it has a 5 second channel and won't work if you minion is attacked.
THE HORRIBRU
- Nothing so far, yay.
THE CONCLUSION
- Based on these completely random first impressions, it looks like we've got Dungeon Keeper 2: The Identical Sequal, like I said earlier. It's one of the most iterative games I've ever played in the way that it mirrors the mechanics of its inspiration almost fully. This is for better and for worse, as you can see above. Personally, and I can't stress this enough, I love Dungeon Keeper 2, and was hoping for more of the same, so I'm satisfied. YMMV.
- Please do remember that these impressions were after 4 hours and 4 maps of play-time, so when the game turns out to be an utter disaster and you spent 25 jewroes on it, don't come knocking on my door with your homemade crucifix.
das it, basically. you got questions I will be happy to mislead you with my lack of knowledge. oh and Jaedar streamed like half an hour of me sucking at the game so he can chip in with all the ways in which I'm wrong. and I'm tagging herostratus because he asked if the game was good and I don't want to copy-paste this thread into a Steam-chat 'cause I'm lazy
edit: spellin' nigga.
Get a cup of coffee off the stove, get your best chair, lean back. You're in for, like, 50 lines of random first impressions delivered from the greatest orator on the Codex (if great oration equals adding superflous adjectives to boring factual text). Here we go:
Be advised that these impressions are formed on the basis of playing 4 campaign maps and dick else, so basically they're completely useless. You have been warned.
THE MOTHERFUCKING SWEET
- Remember how we got 16 years of Dungeon Keeper 2 clones that had little if anything to do with Dungeon Keeper 2? War for the Overworld makes up for this by literally being Dungeon Keeper 2. No, I'm serious.
- It's all here. You build a Workshop (NO EXCUSE ME 'FOUNDRY'), you get access to Trolls (NO EXCUSE ME 'CHUNDERS') from your Portal (NO EXCUSE ME 'GATEWAY'). They build traps and doors and stuff.
- Yes. All. This game seems like Dungeon Keeper 2: 2. As in, Dungeon Keeper 2: The Sequal. Or maybe even Dungeon Keeper 2: The Total Conversion Map Pack.
- There are a few (so far) welcome additions. There are two REALLY good ones. The first is a division between 'minions' and 'beasts'. Minions are your usual Dungeon Keeper 2 dudes. They come from a Portal (SORRY DID I SAY PORTAL I MEANT GATEWAY OBVIOUSLY PLEASE DON'T SUE ME EA). In addition to what you know them for (they train, they fight, they sleep, they have paydays), they also won't eat Chicken (OOPS MEANT MICRO PIGLETS) unless said culinary treats are cooked at a Tavern. If you run out of piglets you can throw some goblins (eh... GNARLINGS) into the stew instead. Pretty funny and very DK2. Then there are beasts. They come from a Beast Pen (another kind of
THE P. GOOD
- Graphics are servicable. They lack that certain je-ne-sais-quoi of DK2, that consistant, polished style and coherent theme. But this is to be expected from a studio started by a 16-year-old and designed by dedicated fans almost. What is there is sufficient. It basically looks like DK2 with less codified style, but some fun ideas. Your [redacted], sorry Chunders, forge by banging their stone-heads on the anvil. Oculus' (beholders) shoot lazer-beams from their eyes. Cultists (formerly Warlocks) mumble to themselves while researching in the archives, sometimes about uncovering ancient lore THAT WILL SHAKE THE UNIVERSE, sometimes wondering where they left that piece of toast (Cultists are by far my favourite unit so far thematically).
- Richard Ridings returns and he is great as ever. His cliché malice is still twisted with bizarre humor a la "one of your minions cannot show the proper papers" or "your minions have elected a spokesperson... I suggest you kill him before he demands a collective pay-raise." The interplay between you (the
- The core gameplay is by and large untouched, but with much-needed additions. Enemy walls take forever to break down (a massive multiplayer improvement). Shrines have been implemented, which are neutral rooms that can be taken over and provide passive boni (like faster breakdown of enemy walls). A new type of construction has been added, which are sort of a hybrid between Rooms and Traps, called Constructables. An example is the 'Underminer' which is a bomb. It can be placed anywhere in neutral or friendly territory, costs a lot of gold, and requires 5 seconds of Imp-work to be complete. Once complete, you light the fuse, it channels for 3 seconds and then blasts every piece of wall adjacent to it down. So this is the new form of enemy wall destruction and creates some risk/reward play. Instead of costing mana, traps now "lock" some of your mana bar instead. Same with the summon minion spell: it doesn't get more expensive, instead it locks part of your mana bar. Picking up minions does the same thing, meaning there's now a lock on pick-up abuse. There are many other such small tweaks to the core DK2 gameplay that are welcome.
- Other nice additions include new wall types (like Brimstone that can't be removed by Imps but explodes violently when Undermined), and more structured returning mechancis, like Endless Gold Sources (remember the purple rock from DK2 that was basically gold you could mine endlessly? It is now a shrine that must be controlled by a player and fought for).
- One of the maps I played on was FUCK-HUEG. There's certainly room for expansion of the DK2 formula here. The map was big enough that it could have been the basis for a good 4-player FFA.
- Let me just re-iterate for the last time: THIS GAME IS ACTUAL DUNGEON KEEPER. No nonsense, no faggotry, no concessions. If you know Dungeon Keeper 2, having War for the Overworld in your hands feels like coming home. It's that close. Like, even Artifacts/Treasures are here, you imps carry them to the Library ('scuse me Archives), they are slowly identified, and provide a one-time use bonus (like +happiness) or more creative permanent shit (like the ability to summon über spirit-imps that can't seize enemy territory).
THE MEH
- Map design so far has been pretty boring. Three tutorial-grade maps and the FUCK-HUEG map which, while impressive, was p. boring to play. I hope it gets better. Even DK2 had some fun starting maps.
- Icons are shit and interface handle pretty poorly. Everything's basically copied from DK2, but with small niggles. Like clicking on the UI sometimes doesn't work, and you click through it on the terrain beneath. Or Icons look like DK2 but without the subtle touches.
- Like DK2, it seems the devs had a hard time balancing the game. With no difficulty settings, I expect this game will be very easy for some, and very hard for others.
- The colour saturation of the game is very bleak, meaning that we're a far cry from DK2's heavily saturated models. Combined with confused and inconsistent art style, the end result is that the aesthetic of WftO is... bland. The definition of the word, actually.
- The writing tries SOOOOOO hard to be Dungeon Keeper 2. However, as so many things created by fans, the end result is mirage. A mirror image. Something that looks and talks the part, but ultimately it is uncanny valley-like in its failure to actually BE what it mimics. In other words: writing is fine, but it has no identity of its own so far, instead being satisfied to play at being Dungeon Keeper 2.
- There's a leveling tree. You develop "Sins" in the Archive (formerly Library), which are like Talent points. You spent them to learn new traps, rooms, constructables and spells. It's a superflous system, really, but it's not really bad either. I suspect it might function better in multiplayer.
THE BAD
- Optimization is shit. My computer is old - granted - but with 8GB of DDR2 RAM, a Radeon 4870 and plenty of processing power, I should still be able to run a game that for all intends and purposes looks like DK2 in a higher resolution, on my PC. I can, but only if I turn off Anisotropic Filtering and dial back the texture size. And then I still get lags after a while. The game seems to suffer from memory leak, which compounds if you tab in and out of it. I get the best results with dialed back settings and no tabbing. Even with that however, the game does not run in a satisfactory manner. I suspect your results will be better if you have a computer that is more up to the task than mine.
- During the FUCK-HUEG map, the V/O of the opposing Dungeon Keeper kept looping (not a bug) three different lines. Since the map took me so long because I suck at this game, I probably heard "PLEASE LEAVE MY DUNGEON, OR I WILL BE FORCED TO REACT" somewhere between 50 and six million times. This is the sort of polish-lack I'm talking about.
- A few bugs hint at some troubles here. When I loaded a save earlier, half of the map (which I had explored) was suddenly unexplored. The game remembered everything I'd actually done (mobs killed, stuff built), it just wiped my exploration.
- Lack of content-polish. While the game seems to be fairly problem-free so far, and while all mechanics are implemented in a satisfactory manner, the actual content doesn't seem incredibly polished. Map objectives are sometimes a little tedious to achieve, content can be a little unbalanced (one map can have a literal no-brainer objective followed by a "boss-fight" with a lord that takes two rounds of 10 fully healed minions to take down). There's a trap called Blade Lotus which is supposed to open a big bladed trap that unfolds and slices/dices, but all it does is a bunch of blades emerge from the ground, stay static and damage the enemy a little.
- In a baffling move, Subterranean Games has removed the stun from minions when you drop them. I suppose they think the new mana-lock from picking up minions makes up for abuse... but seriously. You can pick up minions and throw them down and they're ready to fight instantly. You can't pickup minions engaged in a fight though, so the potential for abuse is small, I guess. You also have a new spell to return minions to the dungeon, but it has a 5 second channel and won't work if you minion is attacked.
THE HORRIBRU
- Nothing so far, yay.
THE CONCLUSION
- Based on these completely random first impressions, it looks like we've got Dungeon Keeper 2: The Identical Sequal, like I said earlier. It's one of the most iterative games I've ever played in the way that it mirrors the mechanics of its inspiration almost fully. This is for better and for worse, as you can see above. Personally, and I can't stress this enough, I love Dungeon Keeper 2, and was hoping for more of the same, so I'm satisfied. YMMV.
- Please do remember that these impressions were after 4 hours and 4 maps of play-time, so when the game turns out to be an utter disaster and you spent 25 jewroes on it, don't come knocking on my door with your homemade crucifix.
das it, basically. you got questions I will be happy to mislead you with my lack of knowledge. oh and Jaedar streamed like half an hour of me sucking at the game so he can chip in with all the ways in which I'm wrong. and I'm tagging herostratus because he asked if the game was good and I don't want to copy-paste this thread into a Steam-chat 'cause I'm lazy
edit: spellin' nigga.
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