Codex Preview RPG Codex Preview: Knights of the Chalice 2 - Augury of Chaos

[Whisper]

Challenging game? Nice.

So where i can buy it, again?

 

[Wunderbar]

Darth Roxor now that you've finished with your garbage indie games time to review Cyberpunk

and Kingmaker.

 

[lukaszek]

deterministic system > RNG

 

[CryptRat]

And these bugs weren't addressed? Yeesh.

They were for a big part, it's not perfect yet but it's in a playable state now, nothing to compare with the release state.

 

[luj1]

All the characters in this game are balls? Balls with character portraits prancing around on screen? Not trying to out myself as a graphics whore, but Jesus Christ that's some art director you got there, Pierre.

No, that's the conceptual vision for the game (I prefer sprites over tokens). The actual art is good.

 

[Darth Canoli]

The difficulty was just fine but i didn't play through the entire chapter 4, waiting to replay it when the game is in its final state.

The only thing i really don't like about KotC 2 is it's even less of a cRPG than KotC and i really wanted KotC 2 to get closer to Dark Sun : Shattered Lands but instead, it turned into a tactical RPG.

Really, the only thing the game needs at this point is real RPG modules like Hearkenwold

In Augury of Chaos, you have little down time, city exploration with even some quests you can complete without combat skills really adds to the immersion and offers some breathing room.
It's also twice as necessary in Augury since combat encounters are really tough.

Just give us some Dark Sun Shattered Lands level of RPG with the challenging and tactical encounters we know KotC 2 engine can provide (and do provide) already!

 

[Darth Canoli]

So let me get this straight. All the characters in this game are balls? Balls with character portraits prancing around on screen? Not trying to out myself as a graphics whore, but Jesus Christ that's some art director you got there, Pierre.

Yeah, in-game characters are BALLS and players are DICKS...
A good match, isn't it?

 

[luj1]

Interesting review, i just want to nuke/retardo infinitron for putting the emphasis on the most negative points of the review while he would shill the worst of the worst sometimes...

It was just like for Grimoire or Underrail mate. You see shills like Pepe or Infinitron, Pepe complaining about accessibility in a retro blobber ("RPG historian" got rekt by a rustic interface), and Shillitron complaining about Underrail release dates. It's always about making a point out of the negative aspects, and ignoring the good. If it's Obsidian though...

 

[Darth Roxor]

>Now consider that you are always outnumbered
Most of the DnD games that Chalice takes inspiration from, tend to throw a lot of enemies at you. It's part of the norm. The tactical play from Chalice 2 comes from how you manage multiple enemy targets. For example, one of the tools that you can use to manage multiple enemy combatants, is sorcery; the enchantment school exists to provide you with tons of crowd control spells. Sleep, Confusion, Chaos, and Hold Person/Monster. Not to mention, other schools of magic provide you with reasonably good crowd control spells to deal with large groups of enemies.

There is being outnumbered, and then there is the castle party.

26 enemies on screen, and that's before the constant reinforcements that add another... 15-20?

Crowd control spells are all fine in theory, but they get progressively less useful once it turns out the enemies have spell resistance 32, high saving throws, and (aoe!) contingent break enchantment to get rid of the crowd control from everyone instantly the moment it's cast - of course that's assuming they don't have mind blank which makes them immune to those effects in the first place. The only actual options you have left in practice are stinking cloud and quicksand by that point. And even before the pre-buff and spell resistance tango begins for real, they still tend to have pretty high saving throws by virtue of being higher level than you.

>You are always out-levelled, often even very significantly.
In Chalice 1 there were also tons of situations where you were out leveled. This isn't anything new. It sucks to go up against a high level enemy that is ten times your level. Just the other day I lost an iron man run in Chalice 1 to this behemoth of a monster.

This is nowhere near as insulting in Kotc1 as it is here. By comparison to Kotc2, this video of yours actually looks reasonable. If this were Kotc2, the balor would have not 2 babau to help, but 6, with a dragon on top and an ice devil or two. The ridiculousness of Kotc2 lies in not just being outnumbered and not just being outleveled, but all of it combined. It's ok to face a strong thing that is way above your average party level. It's ok to face a throng of mooks. It's not ok to face a throng of greater balors, and that's what Kotc2 does all the time.

Anyways, this is how Pierre designs the encounters. However, Pierre does provide the player with tools to deal with such enemies. If you're not properly using your tools, and just neanderthaling your way around; obviously your going to have a bad time. Dealing with enemies that are a higher level than you, is not "bullshit"; it's you not exploring the different types of options you have at your disposal. In regards to Chalice 2, the best example of this is the tomb challenge. There is a tomb near a goblin fort. Once you go in, you can't get out until you defeat all the enemies. Somewhere in there is a weapon that has the disruption enchantment. Making it the perfect counter against all the undead enemies that dwell in there. After you survive the undead encounter, you are then given scrolls to deal with the salamander fight that occurs afterwards. So, Pierre does provide the player with items to deal with over leveled enemies.

you are delusional

I intended to respond to your entire post, but I figured there's no point, especially after I got to this part:

>The worst thing still is that after some point, Augury of Chaos turns into a quick draw contest. Either you win initiative and can obliterate the enemy first (or at least shut down his most important characters), or you get blown up to hell.
I agree. Game is like that. But holy shit is it fun. Those moments where you defeat an encounter, are hard earned and well worth it. The game demands a lot from you. To me, the best moments are seeing the party has won screen. Makes me excited. I jump around in my sit knowing I defeated a super difficult encounter. Maybe I'm just weird like that.

If your idea of "fun" is reloading 50 times until you don't get exploded in the first two turns, then I'm afraid we just don't have anything to talk about. Jesus Christ.

Especially when a lot of what you say is downright untrue in practice. Like the point about "exploring your tools" when the game consistently takes them away from you or invalidates them. Or that by the endgame you also have "supercharged mages" - yeah no shit, sherlock, except that the enemies can afford to spend spell slots at leisure because they are confined to just a single fight and can roll out the big guns without a second thought. Meanwhile you have to manage spell slots for the long run, and you also have no idea about the length of this "long run" either.

And these bugs weren't addressed? Yeesh.

Most of the very big ones have been. It's much more stable atm than it was at release.

 

[Tacgnol]

I've extensively read the KOTC2 thread and I could still read dozens of paragraphs of Roxor complaining about the basic campaign. As a (bad and lazy) PF DM the combat encounters go beyond the bad and right into the hilarious. I'd love to drop some on a real PnP party and see the reactions.

Great one, Darth Roxor . Now come here and enjoy the brofists.

It's a good job I mostly play Pathfinder on Roll20 with my friends because if I dropped any of the KOTC2 encounters on them in a real meet, I don't think I'd leave the room alive.

I get the feeling Pierre hasn't DM'd many actual games with other humans.

 

[Pink Eye]

>then there is the castle party.
Yeah I remember that one. That one was quite something! This is the one that I was talking about. I was caught in a crash loop at the entrance.

Spoiler

It took me hours of reloading and reloading until I was able to successfully get past it. I think the way I got past the encounter was by pulling them outside while shitting out CC spells. It took me hours until I got it.

Spoiler

Also yeah I forgot how stupid that encounter was. Now that I think about it, it really was rough. Not only did you have to contend with that crap, you also had to deal with the *actual* final encounter. Which was wave after wave of increasingly difficult encounters - while having to destroy a stupid orb that had high HP.

>If your idea of "fun" is reloading 50 times until you don't get exploded in the first two turns, then I'm afraid we just don't have anything to talk about. Jesus Christ.
I mean, I usually try to play these games on the hardest difficulty whenever I can. If I'm *not* reloading over fifty times to get past the encounter, then the game is too easy. I am not trying to stroke my ego or whatever, this is how I enjoy these games. I find it really cathartic.

>This is nowhere near as insulting in Kotc1 as it is here. By comparison to Kotc2, this video of yours actually looks reasonable. If this were Kotc2, the balor would have not 2 babau to help, but 6, with a dragon on top and an ice devil or two. The ridiculousness of Kotc2 lies in not just being outnumbered and not just being outleveled, but all of it combined.
That's why the experience was so awesome. Was going to do a youtube playthrough of Chalice 2, but that final encounter on top of being caught in crash loops really burned me out. Holding out on the steam release instead.

 

[Haba]

Winning fights by reloading is degenerate design.

What is the challenge in hitting the load button? Test of patience?

 

[Tacgnol]

Winning fights by reloading is degenerate design.

What is the challenge in hitting the load button? Test of patience?

I made that point in the KOTC 2 main thread and Rpguy got really butthurt for some reason.

If you have to win initiative to beat the fight then what's the point of making you roll for it?

Starting RNG should make fights easier or harder, but not impossible. Otherwise it just makes things a save scum simulator.

 

[CryptRat]

If you have to win initiative to beat the fight then what's the point of making you roll for it?

Because you just need one guy to take one action before some enemies to balance the odds in a 8 vs 30 battles, don't make it like the battle can be summarized at who wins the initiative.

If you think there's a solution then just point it out, no game ever did better, either they're very easy or very, very worse, you don't roll for initiative.

 

[Jvegi]

In this thread we have a bunch of cheap mothershaggers. They did not support the kickstarter, they're complaining about the tokens, even though the people who actually played the game almost universally say they are fine.

Damn late coomers.

 

[Tacgnol]

If you have to win initiative to beat the fight then what's the point of making you roll for it?

Because you just need one guy to make one action to balance the odds in a 8 vs 30 battles, don't make it like the battle can be summarized at who wins the initiative.

If you think there's a solution then just point it out, no game ever did better, either they're very easy or very, very worse, you don't roll for initiative.

Don't have enemies cast their entire barrage of aoe save or suck, or save or die spells on the very first round. Better yet, don't create a ton of new spells that have no saves or ways of defending against them.

Most DMs will show some restraint and have enemies prepare their defences on the first round, or maybe take out specific party members.

Pierre is also ludicrously fond of surprise rounds, which adds yet another avenue for enemies to disable the entire party before you have a chance.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

What is the challenge in hitting the load button? Test of patience

Test of hardware more like.

 

[CryptRat]

Pierre is also ludicrously fond of surprise rounds, which adds yet another avenue for enemies to disable the entire party before you have a chance.

Was there a change at some point? Because people keep saying that but it was not my experience at all, I can't even remember one encounter at the moment where none of my character could prevent the surprise round via the dialog options before the fight (or via finding a lever for the crawlers for example I guess).

 

[Tacgnol]

Pierre is also ludicrously fond of surprise rounds, which adds yet another avenue for enemies to disable the entire party before you have a chance.

Was there a change at some point? Because people keep saying that but it was not my experience at all, I can't even remember one encounter at the moment where none my character could prevent the surprise round via the dialog options before the fight (or via finding a lever for the crawlers for example I guess).

I encountered a lot playing early on. Dunno whether he reduced the DCs or the frequency in patches.

I noticed in the main thread quite a few people that played later on seemed to be complaining less about the surprise rounds.

 

[Haba]

What is the challenge in hitting the load button? Test of patience

Test of hardware more like.

Yeah, like in the early 90's when devious pixel jumps cost many a Tac-2 joystick.

 

[Darth Canoli]

Pierre is also ludicrously fond of surprise rounds, which adds yet another avenue for enemies to disable the entire party before you have a chance.

Was there a change at some point? Because people keep saying that but it was not my experience at all, I can't even remember one encounter at the moment where none of my character could prevent the surprise round via the dialog options before the fight (or via finding a lever for the crawlers for example I guess).

Nah, that's probably just retards playing with clone parties and then complaining they have no options to counter this or that because i had the same experience as you, if I remember correctly, there was only one encounter when my party was actually surprised, a dice roll turned them all the other way.

Spoiler

With the exception of the shaman Shark in Ch. 1 where you're better off losing the surprise round or you're fucked due to moving very slowly underwater.

 

[Darth Roxor]

 

[Darth Canoli]

Not sure I counted this one because the opposition is so weak they barely lasted more than one round.

 

[CryptRat]

Yes, I was not sure about this exact one for example, and maybe there are more with similar groups of such creature types of monsters, but there's nothing wrong with this fight, if it's a few fair fights rather than several fights against mages how is this even worth talking about?

 

[Darth Roxor]

Not sure I counted this one because the opposition is so weak they barely lasted more than one round.

SLA: Mind blast. Party member loses 90% HP. Then party member gets whacked and dies. Reload.