Preview Kult played by Dhruin

[Saint_Proverbius]

Tags: Kult: Heretic Kingdoms

<A href="Http://www.rpgdot.com">RPGDot</a> has a <A href="http://www.rpgdot.com/index.php?hsaction=10053&ID=1055">preview</a> of <a href="http://www.kult.3dpeople.de/">Kult: Heretic Kingdoms</a>, which recently went <b>gold</b> for those lucky people in Europe. Here's a little bit about playing around with fire.. Or air.. But not at the same time:
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<blockquote>My current character is a “Fire Mage” (there are no classes in Kult but this is the sort of character I was aiming to build) with some ranged abilities for good measure. She has amassed around a dozen Attunements but her current character level restricts her to about 8 currently active Attunements. Her primary weapon is a Shaman’s Staff, which basically casts some rather nice variations of fireballs. There’s no mana system in Kult, so these can be cast over and over but it takes a few seconds to recharge each time. She also has several useful air-aligned Attunements – including a good defensive aura and Fleet of Foot – but these won’t work while she is holding the fire-aligned Shaman’s Staff.</blockquote>
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As long as the recharge rate isn't too severe, I don't miss mana much.
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Thanks, <b>Dhruin</b>!

 

[Diogo Ribeiro]

International Hobo? Someone stop Spazmo from following that link!

 

[Diogo Ribeiro]

By the way Dhruin, is the Dreamworld its own thing, or just a spiced up variation of Soul Reaver's spectral realm?

 

[Dhruin]

I haven't played Soul Reaver, so I don't know. It simply overlays some nice "dreamy" blue particle effects, fades out the real-word NPC and fades in any Dreamworld critters but the physical location doesn't change. On the whole, it's just more stuff to hit but it can be useful on occasion.

 

[Diogo Ribeiro]

Hmm. Well, Soul Reaver basically had the real world, and the spectral realm. The main character could shift between those two planes at will (though he could only revert to the real one at certain points).

The spectral realm had its own inhabitants as well, and was basically dead - it was pretty much impossible to move objects in it, but you could use it to travel between situations, activate different things, bypass obstacles, etc.

The Dreamworld seems a bit similar to that, which isn't necessarily a bad thing.

 

[Elwro]

Intriguing story. Choices. Different endings. Where's the demo?

Up to a certain point I thought this game would be similar to DivDiv (which I liked), but then I noticed the "no interaction with environment" part. It's a pity.

 

[Whipporowill]

Great preview Dhruin, I certainly got more interested in the game - although I previously felt somewhat curious on how it'd turn out. Seems likely I should be playing this one soon then...

 

[Barghest]

Any news on a UK release? (I can't find any online retailers listing it)

We are part of Europe after all...

 

[Surlent]

Dhruin, if you happen to be scoping around, could you quickly compare Kult to Sacred ?

The story is intriguing and the quests are designed to expand the story, rather than the too common “collect the 5 magic rings of Akbah to defeat the evil demon”.

In Sacred questing was more mechanical fedx and "kill that thing over there" with plot kinda short of dialog. Is Kult somewhat different or really different ?

 

[Whipporowill]

For one thing, Sacred relied partially on random quests - and in my book, random is seldom something to call home about. Hasn't been any mention of random quests in Kult, so I believe that's one of the major differences - and Dhruin hints about them being a lot more interesting (at least meaningful) than the old Bio model (Collect 4!).

 

[Surlent]

From the official Kult page

Multiple Quests
There are no random, time-wasting quests in Kult; all game activities are pertinent to the story and the character’s place within the world.
· Over 50 quests.
· Face moral dilemmas – the player must judge situations and choose how to act.
· Player actions determine the fate of the world.

This game is starting to look little interesting.

 

[Dhruin]

***** Minor Spoiler Warning *****

Some further comments. I think I'm about 2/3 through now but I haven't finished and I have no idea how meaningful the 6 endings are (in fact, I'm just told there's 6 endings but it's listed everywhere ).

I want to stress that it's an action-RPG. In general, you hit shit. The choices are mostly binary - you either support side A or side B and one of them gets killed. In a way it's like KotOR where one of the choices would be considered "good" and the other "evil" BUT Kult isn't so black and white.

Spoiler **** For example, there's a small side-quest that has some escaped slaves hiding out in a cave. Slave revolts are illegal - do you kill the slavers hunting them and set them free -- or kill the illegal renegade slaves, being a good little inquisitioner. One choice has implications later in the game, which is nice. End spoiler ****

It's obvious which is "good" but as an Inquisitioner you technically should take the "evil" route, so the game doesn't judge it as good vs evil. Either way it's a simple kill one or the other and doesn't hold to Fallout standards but for an action-RPG, I think that's a step forward.

@RP - the Dreamworld sounds pretty similar to that. Not a big deal and most of the time there's nothing but mobs there but it adds something.

Against Sacred: To be honest, I got bored with Sacred after 20 hours. Kult is much smaller (25-30 hours, I guess) and has discrete maps like Baldurs Gate; clear a map,go to the exit, select somehwere from the travel-map, repeat. Occasionally an NPC will mention a new location. Sacred is slicker with combo attacks and more animations and a big open world...but I found the generic quests boring.

Against DivDiv: Really quite different in the end. Not an open world, no interaction (and I mean none, *no* barrels, no movable items...maybe 4 chests so far?) but the dialogue is similar in that there's real dialogue (unlike Sacred), although not as many choices as Fallout and no stat-checks or anything. I like Kult's story better than DivDiv (so far) - no elves, dwarves or demons...mostly in-fighting between the inquisition and secret religious groups.

The Attunements is where it will make or break, I think. Only 6 or so Attunements are documented (they claim 100), so you have no idea what you're going to get first time round. At first I thought it sucked; I rarely seemed to get any fire-aligned stuff (for my "fire-mage") and had all these weapons and armour for air- , earth etc. At some point I said stuff it -- I'm going to try that air-bow even though I don't have much Ranged skill. That was fun - much harder with lots of running away because I was no good with that weapon but it got me a good Attunement. Suddenly I realised that sword I'd discarded because I didn't plan to use swords might have had a cool Attunement. It's challenging using weapons you shouldn't until the Attunement unlocks.

Some players will find this the opposite of roleplaying and I would accept that argument. You can't really map out a character (first time, anyway); I ended up changing weapons and gear every 15 mins (about how long it takes in regular combat) to get as many Attunements as possible. Not very role-play-y but I found it fun and after a while had lots more possible combinations.

In case I've been too positive: very linear, maps could be bigger, choices are binary, no friggin' in-game map!!, 30 hours - could be longer, Attunements may not appeal, no interaction, just an action-RPG with no non-combat skills.

Edit: I believe there's a 9-map demo coming (note- "maps" include larger inside areas that have to load, houses and so on just cut away the roof) - don't know when, though. The beginning is a bit slow but it should give some idea).

 

[Stark]

@RP - the Dreamworld sounds pretty similar to that. Not a big deal and most of the time there's nothing but mobs there but it adds something.

the Dreamworld in Soul Reaver serves another purpose as well. there're occational obstacles that you can't pass through in the real world but you can, in the dream world (a collapsed column the real world blocking the path is still erect in the dream world, etc). So it can create some interesting puzzles.

choices are binary, no friggin' in-game map!!, 30 hours - could be longer

Does the game encourage replay? if so then the 30 hour is not a big issue with me. If it's worth 2 playthroughs then i'm getting 60 hr worth of gametime.

thanks.

 

[Astromarine]

meh, Soul River dreamworld sounds an awful lot like the Shadowrun Astral Plane.

Game sounds interesting, I'll give the demo my bandwidth. As for my money, we shall see.

 

[Dhruin]

Replay? It's linear, so in that sense it's limited. However, I've only seen ~20 attunements out of the supposed 100 and they aren't documented, so I'm pretty keen to replay and see what sort of things are on offer and check out the different endings.

 

[Astromarine]

how good is the ending that you saw? Rewarding, cinematic? or does it amount to basically "congratulations" on a black screen?

 

[Dhruin]

Haven't seen any endings yet...I had to get on with another article but I'll go back to Kult when I get the chance.