Flintlock: The Siege of Dawn - open world ARPG from Ashen devs - coming July 18th

[Gandalf]

The protagonist remind me of Forspoken (I think that was the game's title), Jaheira from Baldur's Gate 2 and Diablo II's Amazon girl a bit.

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

If you go back and watch the very first announce trailer, you'll see the negress's ass was nerfed.

Nothing like paying people tens of thousands of dollars to tell you to do more work in order to make that work appeal to people who will never buy your game.

 

[Fedora Master]

Nice shit heap.

 

[H. P. Lovecraft's Cat]

Daily reminder that codex actively keeps RoboCop: Rogue City out of the RPG thread in favor of stuff like this.

 

[Lord_Potato]

Daily reminder that codex actively keeps RoboCop: Rogue City out of the RPG thread in favor of stuff like this.

Yes, free Alex Murphy from the General Gaming Ghetto!

 

[Lemming42]

Playing the demo and the mechanics feel very weak and floaty, which is a shame because the setting and visual design are really cool. I really like the six-armed thing that serves the coffee, and the character design of the minor god who joins you, and the deformed little chocobo-esque bird that pulls the wagon, very nice striking visuals and a great departure from the generic stuff in a lot of other games. Story seems okay too, protagonist is a bit generic and fits the tried-and-true mold of "cocky idiot who accidentally gets everyone killed and suddenly isn't so cocky anymore" but she's not outright annoying or anything, and the little god companion is fun.

It feels like they've just overloaded the game with too much stuff, a grabbag of trends from the last decade of gaming. It's quasi-open world even though it'd probably be served better by being a more linear experience, it's got soulslike elements even though it'd work best as a straightforward third person shooter/slasher, it's got a perk tree because everyone's got a perk tree nowadays, it's got a crafting system because of course it does. Just a checklist of stuff. Even has white paint on climbable surfaces, almost like a parody.

If they're still developing this and it's still open to pre-release changes, they really need to make the melee combat a bit more impactful and make the hero's dodge more responsive, those two changes alone would do a lot to lift it up.

 

[Fedora Master]

the setting and visual design are really cool

 

[Reinhardt]

this shaneekwa is a great departure from all other shaneekwas!

 

[Cryomancer]

I used to complain about wow clones, but I miss when people complained successful games(even the bad ones), now people are copying Forspoken... Same Mary Sue protagonist and same awful writing and gameplay...

 

[Bad Sector]

Playing the demo and the mechanics feel very weak and floaty, which is a shame because the setting and visual design are really cool.

Yeah, i also tried the demo and the game overall looks good (especially considering the company has 50 or so people according to one of those "company evaluation" sites - and i guess this includes non-production staff like accountants), but the controls felt a bit off. Not something i wasn't able to get used to (i've played worse), but there were cases where i didn't feel "in control" so to speak.

It feels like they've just overloaded the game with too much stuff, a grabbag of trends from the last decade of gaming.

Agree, especially near the start i felt like every couple of steps you get a popup about "you can also do this" and "this enemy cannot be fought normally so you need to do that special thingie which relies on filling that bar".

I did like the idea of releasing areas from monsters or whatever those are and making them "habitable" for shops, etc to open though. But i'd prefer a more lean and focused core combat loop.

The setting of flintlocks vs magic is unusual, if nothing else, though the entire premise so far barely managed to keep me interested. Initially i wasn't drawn at all and only stuck with it because i already spent more than an hour waiting for the download to finish (as time moves forward i often think that getting rid of the physical limitations imposed by distributing games on DVD was a mistake :-P).

 

[Lemming42]

I did like the idea of releasing areas from monsters or whatever those are and making them "habitable" for shops, etc to open though. But i'd prefer a more lean and focused core combat loop.

Yeah, it feels like a lot of cool ideas smashed together really awkwardly into some kind of gestalt entity of every gaming trend in the last ten years.

The world they've come up with is really cool but even that feels like it's being watered down by the presence of the Ubisoft-y open world, I bet if they concentrated all these story and setting ideas down into a more linear style of game then they could come up with something very memorable and unique but instead it feels like a low budget attempt at the kind of thing every other dev has been doing.

I finished the demo and I have no idea if I'll buy the game, which is kind of amazing after such a lengthy and detailed demo. I liked it despite the weak mechanics but I dunno if it'll sustain itself for a whole game.

 

[Bad Sector]

if they concentrated all these story and setting ideas down into a more linear style of game

I think the linear style wouldn't work as well with the releasing areas from monsters aspect, though at the same time i don't know how deep this aspect is. What i'd like to see (i doubt this is how it'd be in this game as i feel it will only be the simplest of implementations) is that you could theoretically visit any area (of course taking into account that not the entire map will be of the same difficulty) but the more you leave areas occupied, the harder these areas will be later on - especially if they are surrounded by other occupied areas - and the worse their condition after you release them (which could end up with, e.g., shops having higher prices). Story reasons as well as resources (e.g. some resources/items/whatever might only be available at specific parts of the map) would incentivize going after these areas (completionism aside).

Now obviously i'm basically describing a different game, but i think this would work fine with a soulslike combat loop (or really any hack-and-slash combat loop). Besides, if you are supposed to be some sort of chosen one might as well have a bit more influence on the game world (mechanically) than hitting harder and soaking more damage.