Banquet for Fools - party-based RTwP in Serpent of the Staglands setting - now available on Early Access

[GentlemanCthulhu]

I picked this one up since i'm on vacation with not much else to do rather than play WotR. I will post early impressions a bit later.

 

[GentlemanCthulhu]

Bit of background: I'm biased towards games with attitude. I hate pussified games that have no grit. I also played the two previous titles from this developer and disliked both of them. SitS looked interesting (though imo the art style was still bad as it was hard to make shit out) and Mechajammer is one of the two games I've scored as a `2`.

Now on to the game. I like the art style. It's sufficiently dark and whimsical. This is subjective so I won't dwell on it much, but at least it's not soft and flaccid like the average game coming out in 2024. Music is also appropriate so far.

You can import your save files from SitS, which while admirable, rather pointless as almost no one will be able to use it. If they are going to do this, they should implement a 'save state creator' ala PoED.

The combat is using an action Real-Time with Pause approach. It tricks you into thinking it's diablo, but there is a turn-order time bar that needs to fill up before you can make and action, and clicking RMB lets you choose skills / abilities / items. I think I like it so far, but I have no understanding of the ruleset, so all I can say is that it feels nice.

You have party members. You can control them directly, or set their tactics, etc.

You seem to be able to use the environment to your advantage, eg. breaking an amphora of wine so it spills on the ground, tripping your enemies.

You can kill the cat. This might sound simple, but tells you a lot whether the game is made by unbearable pussies or not. Any game that lets you pet animals but not kill them should be avoided like the plague (looking at you Dragon Age: Veilguard).

I will stop here, but so far this is the strongest first impression I've had from a game by this developer. If they can keep it up for the entire duration of the game, if there are meaningful C&C, alternative paths, etc., and if the final product is sufficient large (I like my RPGs to have hundreds and hundreds of hours worth of content), then I would fully forgive the developer for their past games.

 

[Jaesun]

But this fucking gender slider... Fuck. I'm not buying it unless it gets a strong bro-approval.

the infamous "sex slider" has exactly 4 options: male, female, tall and short. so no bullshit going on there.

 

[Martyr]

The combat is using an action Real-Time with Pause approach. Think diablo but there is a turn-order time bar that needs to fill up before you can make and action, and clicking RMB lets you choose skills / abilities / items. I think I like it so far, but I have no understanding of the ruleset, so all I can say is that it feels nice.

tbh I found the combat to be tiresome, which really says something after only 20 minutes of playing. the action bar needing time to fill up resulted in me clicking frantically, running around until the bar filled up again so another attack could follow.
there is also no auto-combat afaik, so every single attack has to be manually selected, which again - tiresome, because it involves at least two clicks per strike. party members attacked on their own, but only if enemies were inside their combat bubble. otherwise they'd just stand around and watch as you have to deal with every enemy yourself.

You can kill the cat. This might sound simple, but tells you a lot whether the game is made by unbearable pussies or not. Any game that lets you pet animals but not kill them should be avoided like the plague (looking at you Dragon Age: Veilguard).

I too have killed the cat.
I actually wanted to see if you could talk to it like in SitS, so I brought up the action menu, clicked "Say something" and when nothing happened I clicked on the cat, which resulted in me slaughtering it. I didn't realize that the "Say something" brought up a small speech bubble next to my character portrait. apparently you can type your own words, whatever that does.

as you mentioned, the art style, soundtrack and atmosphere are spot on. the art looks like a claymation version of SitS, the visual style itself is pretty much the same but it is more whimsical because of the clay characters. the atmosphere is still brooding, despite the "cute" characters. running through seemingly endless piles of slaughtered banquet guests sets the tone pretty well.

yesterday multiple people were already mentioning the black screen that caused my computer to freeze. they seem to have put up two patches already to address this issue. I'll see if it changed anything.

 

[GentlemanCthulhu]

tbh I found the combat to be tiresome, which really says something after only 20 minutes of playing. the action bar needing time to fill up resulted in me clicking frantically, running around until the bar filled up again so another attack could follow.

Well this is an RtwP game. They are all like this, only in BoF there is a bar instead of a timer. I think this problem is largely caused by the developer portraying the combat as something that it is not (action, Diablo-like combat). Anyways, you are supposed to just chill and defend or dodge. Personally I don't have any issues with it as I like RTwP.

party members attacked on their own, but only if enemies were inside their combat bubble. otherwise they'd just stand around and watch as you have to deal with every enemy yourself.

Personally I didn't see this. I'm playing as a backline archer, and my party members are doing a good job with their AI tbh. My fighters are keeping the frontline, the mages are trapping enemies and charming them, etc. If anything I thought the leashing is a little too permissive. But again, I only played for a couple hours at this point and it might observer bias.

I actually wanted to see if you could talk to it like in SitS, so I brought up the action menu, clicked "Say something" and when nothing happened I clicked on the cat, which resulted in me slaughtering it. I didn't realize that the "Say something" brought up a small speech bubble next to my character portrait. apparently you can type your own words, whatever that does.

Same exact thing happened to me lol. If you hover on the cat, it will tell you that the cat can't speak.

as you mentioned, the art style, soundtrack and atmosphere are spot on. the art looks like a claymation version of SitS, the visual style itself is pretty much the same but it is more whimsical because of the clay characters. the atmosphere is still brooding, despite the "cute" characters. running through seemingly endless piles of slaughtered banquet guests sets the tone pretty well.

Yeah tone and atmosphere is by far the strongest point of the game.

yesterday multiple people were already mentioning the black screen that caused my computer to freeze. they seem to have put up two patches already to address this issue. I'll see if it changed anything.

I didn't encounter it myself. Might have already been patched. I didn't have any technical issues so far, but I don't like how they handle resolution / windowing. It works, but it's a bit clunky to get it to behave how you want.

 

[Martyr]

tbh I found the combat to be tiresome, which really says something after only 20 minutes of playing. the action bar needing time to fill up resulted in me clicking frantically, running around until the bar filled up again so another attack could follow.

Well this is an RtwP game. They are all like this, only in BoF there is a bar instead of a timer. I think this problem is largely caused by the developer portraying the combat as something that it is not (action, Diablo-like combat). Anyways, you are supposed to just chill and defend or dodge. Personally I don't have any issues with it as I like RTwP.

but that's my point: in proper RTwP all I have to do is one click at the most if the enemies are weak, I can just sit back and watch. here every encounter, even with enemies that're getting killed with one strike, needs two clicks (one to bring up the action menu, the other to select the attack/enemy). as you said, this comes from the developer's vision of an unholy marriage of Diablo-like action with traditional RTwP.

party members attacked on their own, but only if enemies were inside their combat bubble. otherwise they'd just stand around and watch as you have to deal with every enemy yourself.

Personally I didn't see this. I'm playing as a backline archer, and my party members are doing a good job with their AI tbh. My fighters are keeping the frontline, the mages are trapping enemies and charming them, etc. If anything I thought the leashing is a little too permissive. But again, I only played for a couple hours at this point and it might observer bias.

maybe it's different with self-made party members (my computer froze up right after fully party creation, so I can't say), but the two temporary companions in Act I were completely useless.
but also it's maybe because you, being an archer, stand back, so approaching enemies walk right into the combat bubble of your party members. if you're a melee fighter, always storming ahead, the party members are left behind with no enemies to engage with.

 

[Feyd Rautha]

But this fucking gender slider... Fuck. I'm not buying it unless it gets a strong bro-approval.

the infamous "sex slider" has exactly 4 options: male, female, tall and short. so no bullshit going on there.

More genders will be added in the full release. And tall/short will be moved to the new "body type"-slider.

 

[Taka-Haradin puolipeikko]

 

[fantadomat]

Is it out? It looks interesting.

 

[cpmartins]

Is it out? It looks interesting.

Yes, it's on Early Access.

 

[None]

Something about the lighting made me think this scene was CGI, but it's not. Cool to see a rather practical approach be used, I think it produces some very good results.

 

[mediocrepoet]

Might have to pick it up just to see how many cats there are to kill.

 

[Zanzoken]

I am intrigued by the aesthetic, although between the doll-like character models, the muted color palette, and the odd music it feels a little gloomy and grotesque. I had the same feeling about Staglands when I played it years ago.

The combat looks like some retarded mish-mash of RT and TB and not fun to play. Note to indie devs, unless your new battle system is undeniably fantastic and genre-defining, stick to tried and true mechanics that players can pick up and immediately feel comfortable with. Achieve good gameplay through elegant mechanics, well-designed content, and a high degree of polish.

No way in hell am I giving them money for an EA release after what happened with their last game, but hoping this one succeeds and turns out to be a good cRPG.

 

[None]

Played for a few hours last night and cleared most of the first zone. Only ran into one bug where my characters got stuck in a paralyzing trap and the duration went negative. Thought my save was fucked, but after two reloads the problem fixed itself.

Character creation is a little obtuse, but based on the fact that the game expects you to do all your own journaling I'd say that figuring it out on your own is intended. Combat is a little airy, and resolves itself rather quickly and without any particular micromanaging or intervention from me. Could just be I was in the starter zone, I'll have to play more to say for sure. If you like dialogue, there's plenty of it. Quite a few characters in the starting town have something to say, and sometimes your own characters will converse with each other, often with their responses based on their race and skills.

As is standard with their games, the atmosphere and visuals are superb. The art style is fairly unique and pleasant to look at, and performance is also good. Music can be heard in the form of some lyre-only tunes, to dark ambience with some synthetic sounding undertones. Environmental sound effects are there but sparse, you'll find yourself wandering around the forest accompanied by nothing but the footsteps of your party when the music cuts out.

I would have expected most people to hang up their game dev hats after Mechajammer but they're persevering and giving it another shot, which is in part why I bought it. This is the first game from Hannah and Joe that I've played, so if I end up getting burned then that's fine, this cost about as much as a dinner at a middling restaurant. I'll have more to say and whether or not I'd recommend it after I've played more, but so far so good.

 

[None]

And for anyone else who wants to try this game but haven't any experience with Serpent in the Staglands, make sure to take your time. I realized at a certain point that I should have been paying more attention to dialogue and writing more down in my journal than I was, and found myself clicking on every guard I could find to try to resolve a quest because I didn't bother writing down or remembering the name of who I was supposed to collect a debt from.

 

[Jazz_]

Isn't this studio just 2 people? And they finished a game relatively recently right (Mechajammer or whatever)? kinda impressive they already cranked another one out; unless it's just copy pasted assets all over the place I guess

 

[Infinitron]

Isn't this studio just 2 people? And they finished a game relatively recently right (Mechajammer or whatever)? kinda impressive they already cranked another one out; unless it's just copy pasted assets all over the place I guess

It's been nearly three years.

 

[mediocrepoet]

Isn't this studio just 2 people? And they finished a game relatively recently right (Mechajammer or whatever)? kinda impressive they already cranked another one out; unless it's just copy pasted assets all over the place I guess

It's been nearly three years.

Also "finished" is being very generous.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

unless it's just copy pasted assets

Hohohohohohohoho

 

[Robber Baron]

I'm simply mesmerised by the art direction, especially UI, Vagrant Story like combat sphere is also a great mechanic. We need more unique indies out here and this one is as unique as it gets