KickStarter SKALD: Against the Black Priory - retro RPG inspired by Ultima

[Fedora Master]

Are there choices and consequences in this game? For example, are you forced to be the good guys?

None at all, exactly like an 80's game but with a very good setting and atmosphere, and no cringe at all. Playing the good guys, yes, but then there's really no other viable alternative; being bad guys wouldn't make sense

I felt like the way you can characterize the MCs father it would come up again, and I think it should. Just once or twice.

 

[roguefrog]

They do suffer significantly in the late game due to lack of crits and arrow reliance/shortage.

Everyone suffers from crit immune enemies, not just rangers.

I didn't have an arrow shortage past chapter 2. I had like 400+ arrows of variest types. Maybe buy out some shops.

 

[Ladonna]

They do suffer significantly in the late game due to lack of crits and arrow reliance/shortage.

Everyone suffers from crit immune enemies, not just rangers.

I didn't have an arrow shortage past chapter 2. I had like 400+ arrows of variest types. Maybe buy out some shops.

Another good idea might be saving any decent weapons with specific elemental damage too, even if they are inferior to any "main" weapons you find for your fighters. The crit immune enemies in the last parts of the game are a slog otherwise.

 

[Nikanuur]

They do suffer significantly in the late game due to lack of crits and arrow reliance/shortage.

Everyone suffers from crit immune enemies, not just rangers.

I didn't have an arrow shortage past chapter 2. I had like 400+ arrows of variest types. Maybe buy out some shops.

I'd add to that, that one can craft something between 4-8 arrows per rest, plus later on, the Fletching passive (Kat and Iben) recovers several arrows per fight.

 

[Nikanuur]

They do suffer significantly in the late game due to lack of crits and arrow reliance/shortage.

Everyone suffers from crit immune enemies, not just rangers.

I didn't have an arrow shortage past chapter 2. I had like 400+ arrows of variest types. Maybe buy out some shops.

Another good idea might be saving any decent weapons with specific elemental damage too, even if they are inferior to any "main" weapons you find for your fighters. The crit immune enemies in the last parts of the game are a slog otherwise.

Can't say I remember those specifically, sorry, but remember that Fire spells and Sublime spells (Cleric) are your friends, too!

 

[TheDarkUrge]

I would like to see more from this dev. I think the game is one iteration away from being truly great. Make it a bit longer, add more reactivity/skill checks and tweak the combat.

He leaned on lovecraft quite a bit to make Skald's story so I think it will be a tall ask making another more original narrative, especially one with reactivity. I think Skald's story worked out nicely but there were definitely points where I was getting annoyed with how little differences there were from shadow over innsmouth. Surely he could have added more of the

end

robot stuff before the final ending to make it feel unique.

Thoughts after recently finishing this (took around 20 hrs):

- Ending thoughts: Definitely bleaker than your standard ending which was refreshing, but I didn’t understand it completely. Did we break out of the time loop or not, or is this intentionally unclear because of “cosmic horror”?

Yes I do think that we were the

end

final iteration of us charging up the robot/whatever and it finally exploded.

 

[Fireblade]

I want to play through more adventures in this engine though. It was just fun. Clocked just over 25 hours, and while I don't want to dive back into this story again for a while (it is fairly railroaded), I would love more 25 hour or so modules. Everything just fit together perfectly, with the art, music, general atmosphere and usability ticking my boxes. Really hoping the dev will organise a decent toolset for this one, and hopefully churn out any other adventures if he has any more decent stories up his sleeve. I could tell he enjoyed getting his tale across.

According to his dev log posts from many years ago (on skaldrpg.com), "SKALD" is supposed to be the name of the RPG system and engine he's developed, while "Against the Black Priory" is just the first game made in the system. Implication seems to be that's there's many more to come.