Putting the 'role' back in role-playing games since 2002.
Donate to Codex
Good Old Games
  • Welcome to rpgcodex.net, a site dedicated to discussing computer based role-playing games in a free and open fashion. We're less strict than other forums, but please refer to the rules.

    "This message is awaiting moderator approval": All new users must pass through our moderation queue before they will be able to post normally. Until your account has "passed" your posts will only be visible to yourself (and moderators) until they are approved. Give us a week to get around to approving / deleting / ignoring your mundane opinion on crap before hassling us about it. Once you have passed the moderation period (think of it as a test), you will be able to post normally, just like all the other retards.

Dark Deity (Fire Emblem clone)

Blaine

Cis-Het Oppressor
Patron
Joined
Oct 6, 2012
Messages
1,874,662
Location
Roanoke, VA
Grab the Codex by the pussy



Is it good? I haven't got a clue, but it doesn't seem to have even blipped the radar on the Codex.

Hopefully a D1P will buy it and find out whether or not it's any good. Of course, the judgement of a D1P isn't all that great to begin with; otherwise, they wouldn't be a D1P.
 

Endemic

Arcane
Joined
Jul 16, 2012
Messages
4,321

Falksi

Arcane
Joined
Feb 14, 2017
Messages
10,539
Location
Nottingham
Looks good and I love SRPGs, but it totally kills the game when there's no exploration areas between battles like there are in Shining Force 2.

Shame, because this looks like it has some real promise, but battle-organise-battle-organise is always a tough pace to endure over the length of a full game with nothing to break it up.
 

spekkio

Arcane
Joined
Sep 16, 2009
Messages
8,278
Well, I've certainly seen these very similar combat animations SOMEWHERE... ;)
 
Self-Ejected

Thac0

Time Mage
Patron
Joined
Apr 30, 2020
Messages
3,292
Location
Arborea
I'm very into cock and ball torture
4chan impressions range from serviceable with some nice twists to really good. I have not seen someone ripping into it much yet, only one autist who complained that there is randomness in the damage calculation, so you can't plan the entire enemy turn ahead like in Fire Emblem.
I am letting those monkeys be my D1P testers. They are very generous towards srpgs tho as there is a bit of a drought right now.
 

Siveon

Bot
Joined
Jul 13, 2013
Messages
4,509
Shadorwun: Hong Kong
Looks good and I love SRPGs, but it totally kills the game when there's no exploration areas between battles like there are in Shining Force 2.

Shame, because this looks like it has some real promise, but battle-organise-battle-organise is always a tough pace to endure over the length of a full game with nothing to break it up.
Can't hate a game just for being like Fire Emblem and not being like Shining Force.

Granted, Three Houses has minor walking around bits but it doesn't feel fair for this game to dunk it on. I prefer it this way, anyway. It's fun to just get to battles/story right away. Sometimes exploration slows that down. But also, if you just wanted Shining Force, here's that:
 

Falksi

Arcane
Joined
Feb 14, 2017
Messages
10,539
Location
Nottingham
Looks good and I love SRPGs, but it totally kills the game when there's no exploration areas between battles like there are in Shining Force 2.

Shame, because this looks like it has some real promise, but battle-organise-battle-organise is always a tough pace to endure over the length of a full game with nothing to break it up.
Can't hate a game just for being like Fire Emblem and not being like Shining Force.

Granted, Three Houses has minor walking around bits but it doesn't feel fair for this game to dunk it on. I prefer it this way, anyway. It's fun to just get to battles/story right away. Sometimes exploration slows that down. But also, if you just wanted Shining Force, here's that:


I don't hate it, I just don't like the overall pace of games setup that way. It's all about recognising what's right for you, and battle-organise-battle-organise without any exploration or secrets isn't for me. I like multiple dynamics in my SRPGs.

That looks pretty cool though. Will give the demo a blast. Thanks.
 

Fluent

Arcane
Patron
The Real Fanboy
Joined
Apr 8, 2021
Messages
830
this game seems awesome to me. Has everything i want in an SRPG, including tons of hidden artifacts to find, a nice sized, unique roster and plenty of chapters to work thru. I'm so tempted to buy it now but i already have so many games and games I especially need to play first. But dang, it's tempting. :)

edit - I bought it. I figured i'd grab it now before it drops off my radar and isn't available in a sale for awhile. Will post back if i get to put some hours into it soon. :)
 
Last edited:

Fluent

Arcane
Patron
The Real Fanboy
Joined
Apr 8, 2021
Messages
830
Playing it now. It's pretty good, but i was a little disappointed in how artifacts are "aquired". I expected hunting for them in dungeons and so on, but it seems u just gain Tokens, which come in 4 Tiers, and u exchange them for weapon upgrades. U don't actually find any loot or anything except Gold which is used for buying healing items and also permanent stat boost items, etc.. So the weapons are already "there", u just exchange tokens to access them. I understand the smaller budget of the team requires stuff like this but it feels very gamey to me. So far I've fought 2 battles and upgraded all my roster's initial weapons one tier, and then 2 party members I took even higher. But for an example, the progression went Longsword -> Longsword +1 -> Claymore. So I imagine higher level artifacts will be the same way. Also has a gamey feature of switching between 4 possible weapons during combat, that vary in stats. Idk, I like the game a lot so far, the battles are fun and the story is cool and going to get epic I feel, but just some gamey decisions regarding loot kinda bring it down a notch for me. Still, check it out, it's quite good overall. If u guys have any questions feel free to ask! Cheers. <3
 

Fluent

Arcane
Patron
The Real Fanboy
Joined
Apr 8, 2021
Messages
830
Ok, game is awesome, I'm loving it. :) Has interesting story & lore, cool cutscenes, interesting "bonding" cutscenes back at camp (influenced by your actions in battle), and great, top tier combat and weapon progression. Really fun! :) Hope yall enjoy it too. Peace. <3
 

Fluent

Arcane
Patron
The Real Fanboy
Joined
Apr 8, 2021
Messages
830
Had my first class promotion at level 10. U get 4 class upgrades to choose from, each plays drastically different. I could have turned my Cleric into an Inquisitor, Guardian, Priest or something else. I chose Inquisitor as it's a mage-killer class. Those pesky enemy mages must die! :) Very cool stuff, though. The combat here is *superb*, very complex tactical situations to suss out and a very healthy and real challenge on Deity difficulty. It's not an easy game and not a cakewalk, but it's balanced very well too, and you'll have a diverse team of sometimes wildly different levels that all can contribute in their own, often unique way. If u guys have any questions feel free to ask! <3
 

boot

Prophet
Joined
Dec 20, 2015
Messages
1,016
Location
NYC
The writing is absolute garbage. Plot, characterization, world building - terrible, all of it. Absolute shit. Music is also bad, unimaginative and grates on you. Art is ok, nothing special.

Haven't beat the game yet (halfway through) but combat is decent. Maps often feel they drag on a bit too long, but there has been good variety. I like the armor/weapon system quite a bit- can't make precise calculations around it but it feels robust. Weapon upgrade system is gamey but adds another layer to character progression which is good. Usually feels like there is a 'correct' choice for each character's promotion (one example is the mage with terrible accuracy, one class has a special skill that fixes it, the others will leave him at varying levels of uselessness) but the choice is nice to have. Some skills are bugged and it's a bit too easy on default difficulty.

For elite high iq gamers of codex not worth playing, but for codexers with more modest iqs and a FE fetish I can easily recommend it.
 

Palomides

Augur
Joined
Dec 29, 2011
Messages
419
The writing is absolute garbage. Plot, characterization, world building - terrible, all of it. Absolute shit. Music is also bad, unimaginative and grates on you. Art is ok, nothing special.

Haven't beat the game yet (halfway through) but combat is decent. Maps often feel they drag on a bit too long, but there has been good variety. I like the armor/weapon system quite a bit- can't make precise calculations around it but it feels robust. Weapon upgrade system is gamey but adds another layer to character progression which is good. Usually feels like there is a 'correct' choice for each character's promotion (one example is the mage with terrible accuracy, one class has a special skill that fixes it, the others will leave him at varying levels of uselessness) but the choice is nice to have. Some skills are bugged and it's a bit too easy on default difficulty.

For elite high iq gamers of codex not worth playing, but for codexers with more modest iqs and a FE fetish I can easily recommend it.
Is it worse than 'Fell Seal: Arbiter's Mark'? Because that game is fucking woeful in the aspects you mentioned (and even worse in the art department), aside from the customisable difficulty which is decent.
 

boot

Prophet
Joined
Dec 20, 2015
Messages
1,016
Location
NYC
Is it worse than 'Fell Seal: Arbiter's Mark'? Because that game is fucking woeful in the aspects you mentioned (and even worse in the art department), aside from the customisable difficulty which is decent.

I've never played that game but it does look like shit. Dark Deity is probably better than that. Dark Deity also has very customizable difficulty settings, lots of sliders and custom options like 'reversed order of character recruitment'.
 

Palomides

Augur
Joined
Dec 29, 2011
Messages
419
Is it worse than 'Fell Seal: Arbiter's Mark'? Because that game is fucking woeful in the aspects you mentioned (and even worse in the art department), aside from the customisable difficulty which is decent.

I've never played that game but it does look like shit. Dark Deity is probably better than that. Dark Deity also has very customizable difficulty settings, lots of sliders and custom options like 'reversed order of character recruitment'.
Thanks, 'Fell Seal' was another game the Codex spoke highly of, so it's best to be wary. From what little I've seen of 'Dark Deity', you're certainly correct thus far.
 

jungl

Augur
Joined
Mar 30, 2016
Messages
1,420
This game is good. It cuts the stupid pointless crap like dating sim elements and weapon training newer fire emblems have. The battles are fun and the animations are the perfect length where they worth watching which is rare for this kind of game. Its more fun then three houses. Fell seal is too different game to make a comparison.
 

Pocgels

Scholar
Joined
Nov 15, 2016
Messages
166
Just played it. So I'm going to try to give you reasons NOT to buy it, without being unfair.

Playing normally on the hardest difficulty (not trying to speed-run or doing a no-gold run or something), it's a nice challenge but nothing too hard, especially considering there's no permadeath - just a very meager stat loss. Which seemed to be pretty much a ground-level design choice, for two reasons:

First, as you get further along in the game, enemies start to have somewhere around a 20-40% crit chance on average, and since luck got changed from the crit defense to the crit chance stat, there's no way to protect your guys from eating a couple of crits each mission - other than to make sure they're only hitting dudes with high defenses or giant health pools (crits are, mercifully, 200% damage rather than 300%).
one autist who complained that there is randomness in the damage calculation, so you can't plan the entire enemy turn ahead like in Fire Emblem.
It becomes increasing true as the game continues. This goes for the player too, of course, and since there's an abundance of "chance to proc for extra damage skills" that makes the game feel far less deterministic. Unlike hit chance, they don't scale with any stats, either, so it'll always be a 30% chance to deal 30% bonus damage, or 10% for 50%, or whatever.

Second is the result of the weapon-upgrading system. Instead of having weapons that you equip and pass around, each character has 4 "weapon profiles" - Power, Crit chance, Accuracy, and Balanced(Speed). These are always available to every character, but each individual profile has to be upgraded on its own with tokens you buy or are sometimes dropped. If guess they figured everyone would reload if a character they had invested in heavily got killed, because it would really put you back. Sadly, this means there really aren't any weapons with unique properties, and single units can't use more than one damage type. Even worse, if you upgrade a weapon even just a couple of times, it will outdo other profiles in what they're supposed to be good at, meaning it's the most economical to just upgrade a single weapon and use it every time for the majority of the game.

Compared to fire emblem, the damage type vs armor system is kind of a mess. Now you can get matchups where both people are getting bonuses against each other, or both are doing basically nothing, but it's not worth it. You still get the dynamics of arcane magic being good against armor, swords being good against mages, hammers being unable to hit anything that can move, but in a far less elegant way than that being represented by speed, defense, resistance, and luck - all of which are still in the game. It's not always intuitive, either: for some reason lightning is ineffective against plate armor, projectile (bow and arrow) is a different damage type than melee piercing and is ineffective against robe-clad wizards, to name a few examples. Yet the result of all this is a game that plays basically identically the GBA fire emblem games, except sometimes it's ideal to send your unarmored lightning mage to fight their leather-clad archer.
There's also a "Mastery" stat that either increases your matchup bonus or decreases the enemy's if they are effective against you. Looks like they wanted to mix things up just for the sake of it, but I think this stat was probably the best of the new ideas and has potential in the traditional weapon-triangle. Sadly, in the current system, all it does is make it more impossible to get an idea of how much damage you will deal and take.

The numbers also start bigger and grow more, making it more "RPG". You also get these artifacts that you can equip, one per character -
eXcSUd0.jpg
Balance may vary, but those are where most of the fun is at when it comes to builds. Most characters, either by their personal skill or stat growths, are pretty much only fit for one or two of the advancements and will severely underperform otherwise.

As for aesthetics, the sprite-work is generally pretty good, with a few exceptions (archers arms stretch to about twice their normal length when firing, for some reason...). Surprisingly, there's no male or female body types for sprites, either, but you stop noticing after a while.
The writing is absolute garbage. Plot, characterization, world building - terrible, all of it. Absolute shit. Music is also bad, unimaginative and grates on you. Art is ok, nothing special.

Boot is pretty much correct, though he's going pretty easy on the music. There are about two good songs in the entire game, and you barely hear either of them. As for the rest, it's so awful it becomes significantly damaging to the experience as a whole. It's almost as if the choice of music is intentionally bad as a joke or something - even just searching "free fantasy battle music" and picking at random should've yielded a better selection. This does not improve as the game goes on.


Basically, it's exactly what you think it is: a decent fire emblem knockoff, not a masterpiece that eclipses the franchise it's based off of. The gameplay is pretty fun, there's a few bad maps front-loaded at the beginning of the game, but they (mostly) get much better. If you're at the point where you're considering playing or already have played romhacks or srpg maker games, you'll enjoy it, despite the unnecessary clumsiness of the systems.

Is it worse than 'Fell Seal: Arbiter's Mark'? Because that game is fucking woeful in the aspects you mentioned (and even worse in the art department), aside from the customisable difficulty which is decent.

It's not quite as bad as fell seal, but that's not a particularly high bar to clear. Dark Deity is certainly not a game you'll want to play for the parts where characters are talking.
 

As an Amazon Associate, rpgcodex.net earns from qualifying purchases.
Back
Top Bottom