Review Frayed Knights Review

[VentilatorOfDoom]

Tags: Frayed Knights

<p><a href="http://www.rpgamer.com/games/other/pc/frayed/reviews/frayedstrev1.html" target="_blank">RPGamer reviewed</a> Rampant Games' blob crawler&nbsp;<strong>Frayed Knights: The Skull of Smakh-Daon. </strong>They score it 2.5/5.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Battles are time-consuming because, in the grand tradition of games that emulate pen &amp; paper role playing a bit too much, Frayed Knights employs invisible dice to determine the success of every action in combat. This means that attacks can, and do, miss the enemy with alarming frequency. Though enemies are also affected by the invisible dice, the result of this is usually to drag combat on for a long time, with particularly painful moments coming when spells that affect multiple targets and have a chance of hitting in the low nineties miss everything, which does happen. When characters do manage to hit the enemy, the damage they deal is also randomized, and while a certain mindset might find it funny when a priest inflicts considerably more pain than a warrior on some turns, such unpredictability just makes fights take even longer. Weak enemies that are no threat to the party still take at least a couple of turns to eliminate, though equipment and levels do alter the danger zone.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Wait, what? You can miss the enemy? Preposterous!</p>

 

[Morkar Left]

Yeah, the fucking oldschool sucks. What was this developerguy thinking? That I'm a smelly nerdy geek sitting in his basement and playing (or more reading am I rite?) this paper shit rpgs from the last century??? I'm a cool dude!!

How can someone nowadays develop games with such shit in mind? Where's ma plasma gun and why dos not somethin awesome happens when I press buttons? This shit enemies dont even moofe and I cant hit em. What te fuck?

THIS GAME SUCKS!

 

[Jaesun]

The author of that article, Mike "JuMeSyn" Moehnke:

Favorite RPGs
1) Shining Force III (All 3 Scenarios)
2) Super Robot Taisen: Original Generation (both)
3) Chrono Trigger
4) Tengai Makyou the Apocalypse IV
5) Panzer Dragoon Saga
6) Fire Emblem (first in English)
7) Final Fantasy VI

That explains a lot...

 

[commie]

Fucking faggot. Better to have everything do exactly the same amount of GUARANTEED damage(unless the critter picks a defense option which gives a GUARANTEED X amount of damage reduction) in a shitty(er awesum!) rock, paper, scissors puzzle combat like in all those JRPG turds, amirite?

 

[Oriental European]

Weeeee-boooooooooooo.

 

[Mangoose]

The author of that article, Mike "JuMeSyn" Moehnke:

Favorite RPGs
1) Shining Force III (All 3 Scenarios)
2) Super Robot Taisen: Original Generation (both)
3) Chrono Trigger
4) Tengai Makyou the Apocalypse IV
5) Panzer Dragoon Saga
6) Fire Emblem (first in English)
7) Final Fantasy VI

That explains a lot...

Don't most of those game have random misses too?

 

[Davaris]

I think there should be a website that reviews, game reviewers. I wonder what this guy would get out of 5?

 

[sea]

A game? With challenge? Focused on combat? My god man, what were they thinking?! Do I even get to fuck a single hot elf schoolgirl?

 

[Jaesun]

I think there should be a website that reviews, game reviewers. I wonder what this guy would get out of 5?

5 turds out of 5?

 

[kofeur]

The author of that article, Mike "JuMeSyn" Moehnke:

Favorite RPGs
1) Shining Force III (All 3 Scenarios)
5) Panzer Dragoon Saga

These 2 games are good, need to find out if there is a working emulator for saturn...

 

[Ruprekt]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H47ow4_Cmk0

Rated 5 / 5

 

[MMXI]

http://www.rpgamer.com/games/ad_d/torme ... drev1.html

 

[Jaesun]

You are critically hit with -100 points of INT damage

 

[commie]

What a pathetic troll. When was this 'retroview' written?

 

[Daemongar]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but this one of a couple articles/interviews I have seen lately that use the term "invisible dice" in a derogatory manner. Is there some new outgrowth of "action" gamers voicing their opinion on the action-rpg genre, or a sign of some lurking horror....

 

[Roguey]

He's not saying combat's too hard, he's saying it's too slow. That's a legitimate complaint unless he's building his characters terribly (in which case ideally he should be dying, not slowly winning).

 

[Metro]

The author of that article, Mike "JuMeSyn" Moehnke:

Favorite RPGs
1) Shining Force III (All 3 Scenarios)
2) Super Robot Taisen: Original Generation (both)
3) Chrono Trigger
4) Tengai Makyou the Apocalypse IV
5) Panzer Dragoon Saga
6) Fire Emblem (first in English)
7) Final Fantasy VI

 

[Marobug]

http://www.rpgamer.com/games/dragonage/ ... trev2.html
http://www.rpgamer.com/games/fallout/fa ... trev1.html
http://www.rpgamer.com/games/other/mult ... trev1.html
http://www.rpgamer.com/games/other/xbox ... trev2.html
http://www.rpgamer.com/games/elderscrol ... trev1.html

Hell yeah.

 

[visions]

http://www.rpgamer.com/games/other/mult ... trev1.html

A True Mass-terpiece

Epic pun right here
Can't be arsed to read rest of that shit though.

 

[PorkaMorka]

To be fair, trash fights in Western blobber RPGs are just about the worst thing ever. The UI isn't typically set up to move things along quickly or minimize effort, but the game still forces you to fight endless trash combats.

Trash fights that take minutes and large numbers of mouse clicks in a WRPG can be handled in under 45 seconds in Japanese RPGs like Dragon Quest or Etrian Odyssey, either by just hitting AAAAAAAA or better yet by turning on autobattle.

 

[jiduthie]

Battles are time-consuming because, in the grand tradition of games that emulate pen & paper role playing a bit too much, Frayed Knights employs invisible dice to determine the success of every action in combat.

The invisible dice analogy really isn't helpful. He's taken a large and frequently used concept, randomness, and is attempting to describe it as having derived from particular source, with the implication that the source is out dated. Randomness in games goes back a lot further than table-top RPG's, and argument that the entire concept is out dated requires quite a bit more effort than this reviewer has given. Randomness is a good way to approximate the uncertainty of reality. The causes of a coin landing on one side or the other are actually quite deterministic, but those causes are sufficiently complex that predicting the result in advance, with any reliability, is impossible. Lots of things in life are like that, so why shouldn't it be so in games?

This means that attacks can, and do, miss the enemy with alarming frequency...

This argument has nothing to do with the presence of randomness within the game, rather his argument is with the probability distributions that the game presents. Attacks could land with greater frequency while still retaining the random element. In fact, talking about hit frequency only makes sense if the outcome of attacks is uncertain, thus necessitating the "invisible dice" that the reviewer laments.

It continues to amaze me how little thought reviewers give to design concepts. Roger Ebert may be wrong when he says games aren't art. But it's certainly true that game reviewers don't have a Roger Ebert.


Edit: For anyone who's interested in a deeper analysis of randomness in games I'd recommend this article: http://playthisthing.com/randomness-blight-or-bane

tl;dr: "in Poker, strategy is an epiphenomenon of randomness"

 

[7hm]

To be fair, trash fights in Western blobber RPGs are just about the worst thing ever. The UI isn't typically set up to move things along quickly or minimize effort, but the game still forces you to fight endless trash combats.

Trash fights that take minutes and large numbers of mouse clicks in a WRPG can be handled in under 45 seconds in Japanese RPGs like Dragon Quest or Etrian Odyssey, either by just hitting AAAAAAAA or better yet by turning on autobattle.

AAAAAAA works pretty well in Frayed Knights tbh.

As well as it does in the combat every two minutes that you see in the DS wizardry likes.

 

[thesoup]

http://www.rpgamer.com/games/ad_d/torment/reviews/tormentrdrev1.html

Created by the same people behind Baldur's Gate, Planescape: Torment is essentially the same engine wrapped up in a shiny new coat and a completely different setting.

Indeed, there never has been a successfully marriage of the computer and console plots to date. Torment is sadly no exception.

What is worse however, is the fact that Torment has failed both parties it was trying to please; the exploration and battles were sub-par at best, and plot was short and lacked substance.

Ok, my brain just fucking hurts right now.

 

[jazzotron]

The author of that article, Mike "JuMeSyn" Moehnke:

Favorite RPGs
1) Shining Force III (All 3 Scenarios)
5) Panzer Dragoon Saga

These 2 games are good, need to find out if there is a working emulator for saturn...

Satourne

It plays SF3 which is the only reason I have it. There are English fan translations of the last 2 scenarios, but I can't recall where I got mine from.

 

[hanssolo]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but this one of a couple articles/interviews I have seen lately that use the term "invisible dice" in a derogatory manner. Is there some new outgrowth of "action" gamers voicing their opinion on the action-rpg genre, or a sign of some lurking horror....

I can only assume this backlash against "invisible dice" is due to widespread desire for the return of
"visible dice", which I wholeheartedly support.