Kingsvein - new tactical RPG from Rad Codex set in subterranean world

[Yosharian]

Guys how much game is left once you have the

Spoiler

vendor guy

join your party?

 

[Modron]

join your party?

Depends on how much you have left undone doesn't it? Provided you've done all you wanted, an hour or two?

 

[Yosharian]

join your party?

Depends on how much you have left undone doesn't it? Provided you've done all you wanted, an hour or two?

Yeah I've done everything else, thanks

 

[HoboForEternity]

Guys how much game is left once you have the

Spoiler

vendor guy

join your party?

i just finished. if you want to level up the new member, it can take more time, but more or less just the final dungeon section. i just finished it, and i think it took only around 2 hours without levelling him up. i didnt find everything, but most things i think is completed. i didnt find the super secret boss, will probably visit later.

anyway marshal made everything ridiculously easy lol. even after the nerf.

 

[Yosharian]

Alright, finished it finally. Boss fight was... weird.

When the moment came that Byron wanted to 'possess' the boss, he told me to get him close to it, so I tried that, but I couldn't see any way to perform the action. So then I thought, ah it needs to be one of his little pets, so I tried moving one of those to the boss, but although I had the 'possess' action available this time, I couldn't activate it. I thought perhaps I needed all four pets on the boss at once, but half of them had already died.

So fuck it, went for the all out destruction ending.

Pretty good game. Will start writing up the review now

 

[Yosharian]

Well that's weird. I was definitely playing on Titan/Thoughtful originally, but now that I look at the settings, it's back on Vanguard/Normal.

What the hell.

Final stats
Time taken: 25h
In-game time taken: 18d
Enemies killed: 844
Combats won: 76
Turns taken: 3774
Rocks blasted: 156

 

[Grampy_Bone]

Pretty sure you just move him adjacent to the final boss and end his turn. Worked for me.

 

[Yosharian]

Pretty sure you just move him adjacent to the final boss and end his turn. Worked for me.

What the hell. Well I threw that one away lol

 

[Modron]

i didnt find the super secret boss, will probably visit later.

hint

Dig greedily and too deep.

 

[MerchantKing]

I think the ability to grind out infinite XP kinda makes the game too easy

World map respawn should be tied to story progression rather than resting

You have to keep in mind that it's dozens of hours of grinding for very little. Most of the time, it's just extending the range of some abilities.

 

[Yosharian]

I think the ability to grind out infinite XP kinda makes the game too easy

World map respawn should be tied to story progression rather than resting

You have to keep in mind that it's dozens of hours of grinding for very little. Most of the time, it's just extending the range of some abilities.

Extended range makes a huge difference on many abilities, especially spells

 

[MerchantKing]

I think the ability to grind out infinite XP kinda makes the game too easy

World map respawn should be tied to story progression rather than resting

You have to keep in mind that it's dozens of hours of grinding for very little. Most of the time, it's just extending the range of some abilities.

Extended range makes a huge difference on many abilities, especially spells

You get this extended range if you're building characters without grinding. You just don't get to unlock as many of them for each character. The only things that make a difference between grinding and not grinding is at best some extra damage in more places (not going to make a big difference unless you grind for a hundred hours to get enough of it) for some characters and just some more hp/mp/evade chance.

Tying respawn to story is a bad idea for this game since than leave Byron a weak and vulnerable character that you have to babysit too much since you wouldn't be able to level him very much unless you purposely avoided half the encounters in the game just to be able to get experience for him.

 

[Yosharian]

I think the ability to grind out infinite XP kinda makes the game too easy

World map respawn should be tied to story progression rather than resting

You have to keep in mind that it's dozens of hours of grinding for very little. Most of the time, it's just extending the range of some abilities.

Extended range makes a huge difference on many abilities, especially spells

You get this extended range if you're building characters without grinding. You just don't get to unlock as many of them for each character. The only things that make a difference between grinding and not grinding is at best some extra damage in more places (not going to make a big difference unless you grind for a hundred hours to get enough of it) for some characters and just some more hp/mp/evade chance.

Tying respawn to story is a bad idea for this game since than leave Byron a weak and vulnerable character that you have to babysit too much since you wouldn't be able to level him very much unless you purposely avoided half the encounters in the game just to be able to get experience for him.

No you don't, you need a lot of XP in order to level up many spell abilities, even I wasn't able to max out all of them on my 3 casters and I farmed like a madman.

Spell range absolutely makes a huge difference, if anything it is more important than damage in some cases.

In Byron's case, the game could make the camps respawn immediately once you reach that part of the story, since it's basically the last hour of the game.

You defeated your own point by pointing out that farming also gives you hp/MP/damage from upgrade skills which also make a fairly large difference.

 

[Yosharian]

In any case it turns out I might have been playing on Normal difficulty by accident for at least some of the playthrough, so it's not a huge issue.

When I eventually play the game again I'll try Ruin difficulty, I have some ideas on how to make that work.

 

[Yosharian]

Infinitron where do I send the review?

 

[Infinitron]

Infinitron where do I send the review?

Private conversation. Post the text of the review in the conversation, don't send us a file.

 

[Yosharian]

Infinitron where do I send the review?

Private conversation. Post the text of the review in the conversation, don't send us a file.

Alright

 

[MerchantKing]

I think the ability to grind out infinite XP kinda makes the game too easy

World map respawn should be tied to story progression rather than resting

You have to keep in mind that it's dozens of hours of grinding for very little. Most of the time, it's just extending the range of some abilities.

Extended range makes a huge difference on many abilities, especially spells

You get this extended range if you're building characters without grinding. You just don't get to unlock as many of them for each character. The only things that make a difference between grinding and not grinding is at best some extra damage in more places (not going to make a big difference unless you grind for a hundred hours to get enough of it) for some characters and just some more hp/mp/evade chance.

Tying respawn to story is a bad idea for this game since than leave Byron a weak and vulnerable character that you have to babysit too much since you wouldn't be able to level him very much unless you purposely avoided half the encounters in the game just to be able to get experience for him.

No you don't, you need a lot of XP in order to level up many spell abilities, even I wasn't able to max out all of them on my 3 casters and I farmed like a madman.

I don't know what game you were playing. But I didn't have that problem even with minimal grinding.

Spell range absolutely makes a huge difference, if anything it is more important than damage in some cases.

There are no huge differences in this game. The difference each time is only one tile. You can plan your positioning to overcome this one tile difference quite easily.

In Byron's case, the game could make the camps respawn immediately once you reach that part of the story, since it's basically the last hour of the game.

Nah. Sounds retarded. Being able to do an easier encounter or two from the beginning of the game if you're not doing well in the fixed encounters is a good thing. Especially since in a first play-through, you really can't see what every class does and might have wasted some points elsewhere. On a future run, it's probably not even necessary. If you know what classes you're going to use and the exact abilities that are going to be used, there is probably enough experience in the game that you can get there without grinding.

You defeated your own point by pointing out that farming also gives you hp/MP/damage from upgrade skills which also make a fairly large difference.

It's not that big of a difference in the long run. It takes much longer to get those increases with each increase. By that time, the proportional increases in damage, hp, and mp (can't get these all at the same time since they all draw from the same pool) are small and each take a lot more time grinding just for that increase. You have to grind for hours just for at best a 10% increase in damage. Not much. A 300 hp boss taking 3-4 fewer hits to kill isn't a big deal especially given how bosses behave in this game (mostly delayed abilities that you can easily avoid). Going from 20-25 hp in the same time grinding is the only significant proportional increases.

Complaining about grinding is retarded. It always was retarded. It's a conscious choice to do so and you can consciously choose not to.

 

[Yosharian]

It always goes back to 'just create your own difficulty' no matter what flowery arguments someone comes up with initially

 

[Modron]

Self restraint is an important life skill.

 

[Grampy_Bone]

I think the days of grinding for hours just for a small advantage Wizardry/NES Dragon Quest style are, for better or worse, in the past. Most games these days make it fairly easy to over level yourself. I'd rather have the freedom to grind if I feel like it than be stuck on a finite xp curve. That's no better than level scaling.

Playing Horizons Gate right after this, I must admit the toned down damage numbers and skills of Kingsvein are the right call. Though I love experimenting with the class options in that game, I pretty much stomped the difficulty curve with my enchanter team to the point class skills don't even matter, and I'm just unlocking stuff for the heck of it. Even on Ruin. I think KV does a better job balancing tactics with numerical advantages.

 

[Yosharian]

Self restraint is an important life skill.

Alright Ghandi

 

[Butter]

So is there a consensus? How does this compare to Voidspire Tactics and Horizon's Gate?

 

[Grampy_Bone]

I say it beats Voidspire in all respects, better combat than HG but less impressive in content.

 

[Modron]

I'd say Voidspire is better but this was a step in the right direction.