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Wait until it's under $10.I come back to the Codex to quickly skim a few pages on the forum to see whether this game is worth a few hours or not, and all you serve me with is a bleeding retard modder psycho?
...okay in retrospect that's exactly what I should have expected
Not Recommended
1,337.0 hrs on record
Posted: 19 January
This game has hidden behind the Early Access shield as a means of blocking criticism. In the last month at all, they had Reddit manipulate reviews so that the 100+ negative reviews that had dominated for the last 6 months would be buried, and replaced with recent positive reviews. They have spammed everywhere about how they recieved awards for looking good, from an organization that literally only deals with indie devs who bribe them. And now, in the hours before they expose themselves, all they have done is spam Twitch streamers with custom narrator quotes for their channels and not ya know, actually fix or complete the game. Now they no longer have that shield, so I can fully blast them for their myriad failings from a design perspective, a marketing perspective, and a community management perspective. You can read all the old stuff here. Here's a TL;DR of this game's stagnation and a quick Q and A:
Has the game added content during Early Access? No, not really. There's a fourth and fifth area you grind through the same as the other 3, and there's four new classes that run off the same one dimensional game mechanics and that's about it. That's all the game has gotten in nearly 12 months, so if you think all the missing content will be added in the last month I offer great deals on bridges. Missing content such as actual Roguelike elements, proper exploration mechanics, tactical (instead of damage spam based) combat... you know, the things that would make this a game and not a walking simulator.
Has the game improved during Early Access? Nope. In Feburary the game was shallow but has the promise of potential that let people see it through and have bright hopes for the future. It's still shallow, and it's actively moved away from its own vision with every patch while the developers continually prattle about that very thing.
Has the marketing strategy improved since Early Access? No, it has also degenerated. They are even more aggressively spammy than ever, particularly regarding video content creators. What's more, the game goes on ever increasing sales every month, often more than once on the same month. Any time you see an Early Access game getting massive discounts you should smell the desperation a mile off, and it shows because sales are the only time the game gets any sales (along with large numbers of votes on the negative reviews that have wholly dominated it for the past 6 months). Curiously, despite that they had the audacity of raising the price on release.
Has the community management improved during Early Access? They started merely ignoring criticisms, then became corrupt, censoring, suicidal indie devs. After attracting the ire of Jim Sterling Son they became marginally more subtle (and also already censored most of the prime targets) Mostly they stick with letting their community stalk, harass, and commit real world crimes against their critics with their unspoken permission, while spinning delusional narratives during every "interview" of the past 6 months about how critics in general, or one specific critic in particular (me) have no valid points because their game is perfect since the only things anyone could have any problems with are optional (and that's not true either). During these mock interviews they spend more time in rampant denial their game has any problems whatsoever than they do discussing what they believe are its positive traits. Should the interviewer put on a sufficiently shillish performance they will even be hired (see: RektHookJohn).
Has the community improved during Early Access? No, that's the biggest casualty. It started out about what you'd expect. Lots of challenge gamers, pretty level minded and intelligent people. Most of them left early because this game was nothing like that (and still isn't). Those that haven't have became very vindictive (see: me). And filling the gap is a lot of Johnny Come Latelies who are either unfortunately caught in the crossfire or the sorts that imploded what community that once existed in a manner of days with their raging hostility at all forms of criticism. Fun fact: No supporter has ever been banned no matter how out of line their actions were. They barely get warned, and reporting them is considered abusing the report feature.
What else are they doing wrong? Revisionist history for one thing, where they conviently forget about things they've already done or that have already happened so they look good now and people not familiar with their past history but who are following them (most people) will be fooled. Very large amounts of tedium and grind mismarketed as difficulty - hell, they even hired the tedium/grind mod guy and used his ideas which you can already see discussed at length in most of the other helpful reviews. The game's still one dimensional: If you just spam damage you will see the game for what it is, if you pretend it's somehow tactical you might buy in on this meme this game is somehow difficult because your trash classes and skills will not kill the enemies. Their favorite thing is putting on a good show - for example, making a patch in which some (not all) of the tedium is made "optional" right before both a sale (gotta Suicide Squad more real people so they can get more moneys), and announcing that if you want the real quality difficult Roguelike experience that you allegedly came for, you gotta wait until release, grind through various ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥t 3 times so you unlock "NG+", and at that point all the tedium is locked "on" because that's what difficulty is about apparently.
It seems their business plan at this point is making the game so long and grindy and tedious that no one will actually sit through it all, at which point any complaints about the game being hollow/shallow/etc will just be dismissed. It will then be mismarketed as "difficult", because people are having extreme difficulty remaining awake for it and you'll see more memes about how it's just like XCOM or Dark Souls (without stripping out nearly every feature both of those games have and being very generous with narrative liberties).
And before anyone points out the 800 pound gorilla in the room: At one point I believed in this game's potential enough that I made it a proper game myself. After a few months it became so broken this was no longer possible, as there were now massive amounts of hardcoded imbalances. But I am not reviewing my work, I am reviewing theirs so the large hour count just means both that I at least have a grasp on what a difficult Roguelike is and what it is about and as a reminder of what could have been if we had a competent development team and overconfidence were not a slow, and insidious killer...
I see Celerity's review is up:
1 person found this review funny
Lol. Like I said before, its suckiness was apparent after about 5. Just instead of dismissing it as such I made it an actual game, and spent 1,337 hours on that. That was a mistake, but that's what I get for being optimistic about games.
611 of 1,020 people (60%) found this review helpful
66 people found this review funny
Not Recommended
0.0 hrs last two weeks / 1,337.0 hrs on record
Posted: Jan 19 @ 12:59pm
Updated: Jan 19 @ 1:08pm
Did they add any fail state?
Celerity or Sensuki, which is better and why???
1,337.0 hrs on record
Who is June ?Not playing this anymore and dont intend to in the future, but if nothing else this game eventually led me to the Dark Worlds of HP Lovecraft series, narrated by June. Awesome stuff.