Game News GODS demo at 3DGamers

[Vidder]

- the touted trade system is actually gamebreaking - some traders offer their items about 30 percent below market value, which in theory challenges the player to find profitable trade routes - but the sellers buy the items right back, thereby not only invalidating the whole trade system, but also allowing the player to accumulate thousands of cold coins within minutes!
Even without this bug, the system would allow people to make more money by trading for five minutes than by going on a 30 minute fighting mission.

are you sure about that? normally you can only sell "ingrediences" to traders whom will produce their products out of those. best trade route for example is: buy grain from some lady in uhm "petrovice?" and sell it to the miller. then buy flour from the miller (he needs the grain to produce it!) and sell it to the maid walking around in the maintown with a tablet or something. she needs it to produce cookies and stuff.. and so on.

in my game for example i bought all flour from the miller several times, and now he only got 1 ready.. i think he needs to regenerate his stock.
trading also takes lots of time (no shortcuts from the starting point of an area to the actual trader) plus in the full game i assume you WILL need food for travelling, so that also counts as expenses for the travelling to trade and are on the list of your "upkeeping".

also: sure you can create much more riches with trading than with "adventuring" but thats the mechanisms the game plays with. you need huge amounts of money to proceed with your characters jobs (later in the demo) and buy good weapons and armor. adventuring on the other side is more for xp / items / getting to know the people etc.

so its a coherent system for me.


and to say it again: the alchemy system totally rocks! you have to buy recipes and ingrediences. and are also limited by your alchemy level which you can upgrade via some story elements.

 

[Nicolai]

Yeah, the font made the game worthwhile.

I can't remember posting that. D:

 

[Naked_Lunch]

Way to derail the thread, Congoid. D:

I haven't tried the alchemy system yet, but it looks fun. Any comment on the "witty" magic?

 

[Vidder]

Any comment on the "witty" magic?

since the "magic" tab in my inventory is empty and the story hints a certain "loss of skill" in that direction i think that either magic is completely out of the demo, or you can use magic not until later into the game, when you regained your abilities. also magic is forbidden in the world, so maybe you first have to find a secret magic order or restore it somehow or something.

the only "spell" i found (useable in combat) is this "summon wolf" spell, which is hidden in a crystal which you can set into a weapon. (right click a weapon, notice the possible empty crystal slots per weapon) there are more crystals in the demo, but i dont know whether or how they work.

 

[Sarvis]

So I played the demo for a bit.

Graphics are ok, interface is annoying. Dialog is annoying too, I don't see why these foreign developers don't write the games completely in their own language and then hire competent translators. I mean hell, Anime fan subs are generally of better quality.)

Combat system seemed like it had a little potential. Different attacks were available at least so I can only assume that would expand into a more interesting combat system.

Unfortunately it crashed after my second fight, and I don't feel like going through it all again.

Overall, if they published a demo of the finished version I might try again but right now I definately wouldn't buy it.

 

[BeholderX]

are you sure about that? normally you can only sell "ingrediences" to traders whom will produce their products out of those. best trade route for example is: buy grain from some lady in uhm "petrovice?" and sell it to the miller. then buy flour from the miller (he needs the grain to produce it!) and sell it to the maid walking around in the maintown with a tablet or something. she needs it to produce cookies and stuff.. and so on.

Yes, I'm sure. I can buy all the pottery from the woman in the starting town and sell it right back to her for a profit.

 

[Vidder]

interface is annoying. Dialog is annoying too

i found the dialog to be sufficient. (of course exept of some typos and obviously wrong sentences.)

out of interest: whats so annoying about the interface?

 

[Sarvis]

interface is annoying. Dialog is annoying too

i found the dialog to be sufficient. (of course exept of some typos and obviously wrong sentences.)

out of interest: whats so annoying about the interface?

Mostly having to hold down the right mouse button to turn. I could live with normal mouselook, but having to hold down a button to do it is annoying.

Oh, another thing, though much more minor, was that if you use the numbers for selecting dialog options at the end it will pull up whatever window is tied to that option. So I guess 1 ibrings up the formation screen, and if you end a conversation by choosing 1 it brings that window up at the end.

I'm expecting some of those things to be fixed by the time the game is released, so I may give it another shot.

 

[Gwendo]

The game has a retro look and feel. You can't even enter houses, the textures look like low quality jpg (blur and grain too noticeable), people walk like robots, even walk agains't you, a world too static (playing it made me remember playing Avernum, except in Avernum you can enter houses).

Awful loading times, but it's only a beta, so I guess that will be optimized.

Although the game is 3D, it's essence is too 2D, if you know what I mean. So far, it's a soulless game.

 

[Vidder]

it's a soulless game.

crazy talk!

 

[Necropennis]

The problem with this game is that it doesn't REDEFINE RPG!

 

[Vidder]

The problem with this game is that it doesn't REDEFINE RPG!

oh.. ok.. you mean ... it is just from the "old style" days then? you know, the rpgs people from the early 90s were forced to play.

 

[Claw]

Mostly having to hold down the right mouse button to turn. I could live with normal mouselook, but having to hold down a button to do it is annoying.

You don't.

 

[triCritical]

Naked_Lunch is right.. I don't like the Final Fantasy style combat.

I honestly don't know why games (clones) and FF still do this garbage. Why they don't move to a small chess board as HOMM4, or FF Tactics is beyond me. I don't think there is too much overhead, considering they are already changing the dynamic of the game for battles. Not to mention 3D engine's now make this trivial compared to 2D. I mean there are so many good ways to do things, but people seem to always choose the bad way. Of course it could be me thats wrong, but I doubt that. :wink:

 

[Sarvis]

Mostly having to hold down the right mouse button to turn. I could live with normal mouselook, but having to hold down a button to do it is annoying.

You don't.

Really? How do you look around/turn then? A and D just strafe, and moving the mouse around just moved the mouse pointer... couldn't get into options to change any settings...

 

[Drakron]

Keep in mind FF is a old series and back then it was dificult on a console to make that kind of "tactical" combat.

You sould look at early FF screenshoots, then you realize that Square (unlike others) maintained its combat system instead of jump into the latest fad (how things changed now).

 

[Sarvis]

Keep in mind FF is a old series and back then it was dificult on a console to make that kind of "tactical" combat.

You sould look at early FF screenshoots, then you realize that Square (unlike others) maintained its combat system instead of jump into the latest fad (how things changed now).

I don't think it was that difficult. Certainly not impossible, look at the old Romance of the Three Kingdoms games.

It's what they went with first, but they've kept it because their legions of fans enjoy it. Including me. It's like the best of both worlds. It does exactly what RTwP is <i>meant</i> to do: Make battles go quickly, while keeping some strategic value to the combat system. Sure it's StrategyLite... but it's better than anything I've seen in a RTwP system.

 

[Claw]

Really? How do you look around/turn then? A and D just strafe, and moving the mouse around just moved the mouse pointer... couldn't get into options to change any settings...

Try touching the edge of the screen with the mouse pointer.

 

[Sarvis]

Really? How do you look around/turn then? A and D just strafe, and moving the mouse around just moved the mouse pointer... couldn't get into options to change any settings...

Try touching the edge of the screen with the mouse pointer.

Oh, ok. ONly... that's even more annoying.

 

[Claw]

That is your problem, I'm afraid.

 

[Sarvis]

That is your problem, I'm afraid.

Actually, it's the developers problem since they want me to buy the game and so far that's my biggest reason for not buying it.

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

Try touching the edge of the screen with the mouse pointer.

You can do that.. or you can hold down the right mouse button and look around. The right mouse button thing is much easier.

 

[Aldin]

I dunno about this one. Staggering around like a drunken sailor I walked up the plank and became trapped in a bunch of barrels near the mast. Realistic? Perhaps. Though unintentionally so methinks. Unless they make walking around less disorienting or offer free dramamine I'm skipping this one.

~Aldin

 

[Claw]

Actually, it's the developers problem since they want me to buy the game and so far that's my biggest reason for not buying it.

Yes, but that's trivial. Unless a large group of people states this as a main reason for not buying the game, it's a petty argument.

And Saint: While that is right, we did go over it and aren't you kinda missing the point of why I posted that in the first place?

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

And Saint: While that is right, we did go over it and aren't you kinda missing the point of why I posted that in the first place?

Probably did. I think it would have been better to have right click bring up the mouse than make it the mouse-look button. After all, you're looking around and steering a lot more than you're using the interface.