Well, I'm done. It tells you everything you need to know about this game's encounter design that during the final battle, while fighting the same goddamn monsters you fought on level 4, the enemy gets a non-threatening boss while you get the assistance of *TWO* dragons
Positives:
- Some of the best actual fluff-roleplaying, if not the best, in the business. Rolling Arcana checks to recognize tablets that give you some lore and will be worth alot to the factions of the game, getting advantage on speech checks on Orcs if you know Orcish, having Insight reveal if a person is lying or maybe just giving you an edge on a Persuasion check. Really cool.
- On paper what might be the best systems of a D&D RPG ever. Look at how cool this shit is:
Yep, that's my paladin standing horizontally on a spider's web with her Cloak of Arachnids. Sick stuff. And there's a bunch more of that, 5E rules are implemented pretty well, you're excited to level up, you have many options during combat etc.
Negatives:
- Horribru story but honestly who cares
- Mediocre-to-bad encounter design that fails to utilize the genius systems
- Absolutely insane difficulty curve. Remember when
Mortmal mocked me as a God amongst men because I didn't need to rest after 6 encounters? Past level 4, I don't think there's a Codexer who will have to rest in that span of encounters - and past level 6? Nigga please. You are not allowed to rest for the final sequence of fights in the game (5 fights total). I didn't know that so I burned *everything* on the first encounter and had nearly no spells left for the final fight. I still beat it, because your gear is absolute insanity at that point while monsters are still flailing at your with natural weapons and few threatening abilities. And did I mention some of the enemies are the same enemies you fought at level 4 while you get two dragons fighting for you? Yeah, it's close to winnable without even contributing.
This fact - the incredibly poor balance and so-so encounter design - harms the game beyond redemption. From level 6 to 10 I did not enjoy my time with the game despite this being like my dream game on paper. It's really impressive what they've been able to achieve with such obviously limited resources. Everything in the game is amazing - except actually playing it, because it demands nothing from you.
You can turn up the difficulty and you'll have to pay more attention, but the difficulty from the settings is just penalties to your to hit chance and saves while the enemies get bonuses. So enemies don't get more threatening or numerous - you just get fucked more by variance while your opponents get blessed by it. And it still won't be hard.
I really hope they make an encounter/difficulty patch for this one. The company is called 'Tactical Adventures' and the game is clearly about 5E combat. As a result, the trash story and characters are easily forgiven.
Bad gameplay is not.