Review Lionheart first impressions at Gamers with Jobs

[Saint_Proverbius]

Tags: Lionheart: Legacy of the Crusader

<A href="http://www.gamerswithjobs.com/">Gamers with Jobs</a> have put up their <a href="http://www.gamerswithjobs.com/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=564&mode=flat&order=0&thold=0">first impressions</a> of <A href="http://www.reflexive.net">Reflexive</a>'s dungeony, alternate Earth CRPG, <A href="http://lionheart.blackisle.com">Lionheart</a>. Here's the conclusion:
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<blockquote>All told, I'm pretty pleased with Lionheart so far. As your character develops skill, even under the sometimes heavy pressure of the pace, you feel increasingly capable of handling your foes. Never as frantic as Diablo, but also not as thoughtful as Fallout, Lionheart seems to have found its own pace somewhere between action oriented and overly strategic. Set to the backdrop of absolutely gorgeous scenes, and an alternate history where you interact with the likes of Leonardo Da Vinci, Cervantes, and Shakespeare, the gripes I've had so far don't come close to outweighing the positives. Of course, I'll take more time to weigh those complaints in a much more comprehensive review but for now Lionheart passes my first impression litmus test; that being, I'd rather be playing Lionheart than writing this article.</blockquote>
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The problem with first impressions is that you still have that shiny, new feeling for a game. Hell, I even liked <i>Black and White</i> for the first two days.
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Spotted this at <A href="http://www.bluesnews.com">Blue's News</a>.
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[protobob]

What I think is funny is how you meet all these famous people. You're in a huge city, supposedly tons of people, and yet a good portion of the people you meet are historicaly significant/famous.

 

[Volourn]

Think of it as LH's equivelant of meeting Drizzt or Elminster in D&D games.

 

[Jed]

Or how all those "past life" kooks always claim to be Cleopatra or some marqui, rather than some unknown druken peasant farmer.

 

[Skorpios]

Yeah, not like all those other RPGs where you have huge cities full of nothing but people with rats in their cellars, or who have left their keys at home, and could you go and fetch them? Cities with more brothels and weapon shops than food stores. (What do all those NPCs eat? Battleaxes?) Yep, when I want a realistically portrayed city, RPGs are always my first port of call.

That's a great criticism guys: "This game is stupid because they've filled the first city with interesting and familiar characters from history."

It is a CITY - one of the great centres of post-Disjunction Europe! Of course there are going to be famous people there. It's like going to Hollywood and being surprised when you see Cameron Diaz or Sean Connery.

And SP - there is no problem with First Impressions when they are clearly labelled as such. The reviewer went out of his way to make this clear - you can't criticise him for 'gushing' too much. His first impressions are favourable, that is clear, but he hasn't made any claims beyond that and he has pointed out several of the problems that people have with the game. I'm looking forward to a full review from him. Good or bad it looks like it will be done with some thought and balance.

 

[protobob]

It's an average game, what more can you say? The first four to five hours into the game I was thinking "whoever said this game has less dialogue than id2 is crazy,' but then it just becomes one huge 'hack-and-slash clear the map' game somewhere along the way.

I'm now 15 hours into the game. I'm pretty much in diablo2 mode: kill things, level up, phat lewt.

As far as the historical figures, sure, it's a big city, but I feel like I'm in a League of Extrordinary Gentlemen, 16th Century Edition.

 

[Psilon]

A comment from games.slashdot.org's "article" on Lionheart. Note that the average comment-posting population there loves FF and IE games. They're nowhere near as finicky as we are when it comes to games.

I've described this game as 20% good copying off the Infinity Engine games, and 80% homebrew design -- most of it bad.

• You can't give attack orders or change target while paused. Please note that you can go into the inventory and go through a complete makeover though.
• The maps aren't annotated.
• You can't annotate the maps.
• The game's 800x600. You can up the resolution by editing a file, but the game craps out so it's useless. (I usually don't comment on resolution, but given the timespan since BG2 I would have thought they'd at least make the game _capable_ of higher resolutions, if officially unsupported.
• Low resolution results in "zoomed in" effect, making ranged combat mostly useless.
• Good news: Zombies move slowly, ranged combat works! Bad news: Pretty much everything else zips along, giving you one ranged shot until melee-time -- if you're lucky.
• Multiplayer only through Gamespy. Must use undocumented command line params to connect directly (the game have no way for you to enter a IP or hostname to connect to) (ps: -connect, -host)
• In multiplayer, all players must keep together for the simplest things, say like entering a house (this is worse than the IE games. And oh, you thought the "You must gather your party"-line of BG was bad? Check this game out...)
• Completely over the top intrusive interface. Press F2 to remove it completely.
• Can't navigate by clicking minimap
• Can't navigate by clicking game field map, if too far away from char(!)
• Choice after choice removed from the hands of the players by the designers. Example: Exported chars are stripped of their items. Wouldn't it be better to leave that up to the gamemaster to decide?
• If you're typing the chat window, you can't move your char. Pray you're not attacked while typing...
• Very few spell and items slots. 7 in total. Choose well. Shouldn't have been a problem to supply 3x7 rows using the alt and ctrl modifiers, but did they? Nope.
• Can't chose in dialogue using keyboard. Instead of assigning chars/nums to responses, waste space on over-obvious symbols.
• Said to use 3D-models for chars/monsters, but the anims are very sparse. Watch your char spread his/hers legs each time you stop.
• No way to rest in game. You might find that you need to leave the game 10-20min _real time_ to let your mana regenerate.
• During skillpoint distribution, there's no minus-key to remove a just assigned skillpoint, so you can't "try" you're way around the tree.
• Overall, very unpolished gameplay. I could list many more items, all of which became apparent after a couple of hours with the demo. Let me give you another example: I used the racial trait "Skin of Thorns". Now, if I check the attributes tab in the game and hover "trait", the description will appear in a designated information box in the interface. However, the text for this trait is too large, so it overwrites part of the interface!

It's a decent game -- there are good stuff too -- but you gotta wonder what Reflexive was smoking with some of these design decisions, really.

Try the demo before you buy. The demo is unfortunately very very combat heavy and was developed against the wishes of the devs (the publisher requested it), but it's at least representative of the combat and interface of the final game. The questing and dialogue is very good for CRPG standards, but so far -- I've only played for a day -- ... no PS:T

 

[Linedog]

Yeah, not like all those other RPGs where you have huge cities full of nothing but people with rats in their cellars, or who have left their keys at home, and could you go and fetch them? Cities with more brothels and weapon shops than food stores. (What do all those NPCs eat? Battleaxes?) Yep, when I want a realistically portrayed city, RPGs are always my first port of call.

That's a great criticism guys: "This game is stupid because they've filled the first city with interesting and familiar characters from history."

It is a CITY - one of the great centres of post-Disjunction Europe! Of course there are going to be famous people there. It's like going to Hollywood and being surprised when you see Cameron Diaz or Sean Connery.

And SP - there is no problem with First Impressions when they are clearly labelled as such. The reviewer went out of his way to make this clear - you can't criticise him for 'gushing' too much. His first impressions are favourable, that is clear, but he hasn't made any claims beyond that and he has pointed out several of the problems that people have with the game. I'm looking forward to a full review from him. Good or bad it looks like it will be done with some thought and balance.

I have a very good friend like you; if I say the moon is silver, he says it's black. He is a kneejerk contrarian. He is otherwise a great guy and you probably are as well. But, like his, your argumentatve and incredibly wordy style is tiresome.

 

[Astromarine]

I know several people like you. They get in a place, feel the "general" opinion there, and gang up on the people who are contrary to that opinion, as a means of gaining acceptance.

Skorpios HAS an opinion, unlike you. Most of the people who are against his opinions TELL him so, and their reasons, and generally the debate comes off as intelligent, if wordy. Intelligent and wordy is what we DO here.

Well, most of us. You apparently don't.

Have an issue with something he said? tell him so, and tell him why. Shooting "Oh yeah? Well you're a dummy" in pure kindergarden fashion will gather you no sympathy.

 

[dipdipdip]

Comment from Gamefaqs:

would have to say that I liked Arcanum a lot better than Lionheart. After you leave Barcelona the game just becomes pure hack n slash. Sure there is that little french town but after that there is nothing but a few merchants here and there. The rest of the game is just one big dungeon that becomes insanely hard towards the end, at least it was for my one-hander/diplomatic/evasion demokin templar. I know a pure diplomat can't survive the game, for a good part of it there is no opportunity to talk your way out of a fight, and those companions couldn't fight their way out of a wet paper bag so that doesn't help either.

 

[HanoverF]

I get the sneaking suspicion that Reflexive washed their hands of Lionheart once Interplay didn't take them to E3, it seems unfinished, untested, and it is broken. Plus its not going to be patched unless Reflexive gets $paid$... just another nail in the coffin

 

[Psilon]

That's a strong possibility. The Descent 3 v1.4 patch was made sans funding by a guy who had already submitted his six weeks' notice. And Descent 3 was patched.

 

[DarkUnderlord]

[*]Can't chose in dialogue using keyboard. Instead of assigning chars/nums to responses, waste space on over-obvious symbols.

Well, those indicators are there for the morons.

That's a great criticism guys: "This game is stupid because they've filled the first city with interesting and familiar characters from history."

I think the complaint is that it's over-done. Filling a city with interesting characters isn't an issue, making every second character OMFG Leonardo, Van Gough, Michaelangelo!!11! is probably a bit much.

Interesting the game goes downhill into pure hack 'n slash after the start. I had heard that someone from BiS managed to sneak their way through without fighting anything.