The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance Tactics - based on the Netflix prequel

[grimace]

Did they release a dvd or blueray yet? Seems like this switch collection should have had that and original film.

A box set with behind the scenes interviews and videos showing the creation of the puppets and sets would sell well. I have not heard news of such a release in the works.

 

[Thac0]

I finished this today after exactly 20 hours. Hardest difficulty and not a single non story fight taken, so no excess xp to make things easier. My takeaway:



Cons:

• Everything that is not combat or character progression is bottom of the barrel. Bad UI, bad story, bad cutscenes.
• The game loosely follows the story of the Netflix series, but it has been ages since I watched that. I occasionally remembered a story beat from playing, the rest of the time the story might as well have been glibberish.
• There is a lot of bullshit in this game. Quest win conditions changing halfway through, like going from pull all levers to kill all enemy, or spawning extra levers deep into enemy territory as you pull the last one
• Frequent enemy reinforcements, often completely untelegraphed, can swing maps as five monsters are warped in around your mage
• Some enemies have quite mean skillsets, there are levels which are close to impossible unless you are immune to stun or poison. This means you start the level, get wiped, buy immunity accessories and win easily
• No good documentation of game rules and sometimes unfair implementation of those
• Bad AI

Pros:

• Character Progression is fun. This game is heavily Final Fantasy Tactics inspired, and you can have two classes, a mainclass and a subclass. Out of your 5 combatskills three have to come from your mainclass and the other two from the subclass
• There are a lot of classes. 3 base classes, 6 advanced classes and 3 elite classes for gelflings. 5 classes for podlings. 2 monster classes
• Classes have a lot of skills. Every class unlocks around 8 skills, most of them are usefull and have a reason to be there. As you can take only 3 of them there is a lot of meaningfull choice going on.
• Skills are fun. There is a lot of stuff from simple area targeting damage spells and buffs to summons, constructs and weirder stuff like a skill that damages all enemies and heals all allies, but can only be used when the user has 2 or more buffs.
• Positioning in combat is meaningfull. There are a lot of area obstacles, like rolling boulders and poison pits. Also a lot of passives that give bonusses to adjacent heroes and aoe effects with friendly fire.
• A lot of quests have unique objectives beyond kill all enemies. More than half of them are not bullshit and quite creative.
• Some maps are really good. The coast maps in particular are a joy with killing enemies with the incoming tide or getting your units drowned when you do not manage to evacuate to higher terrain fast enough
  
• Combat is fun in general. Most units die in 2-4 hits, which is a good sweetspot to make combat feel snappy and threatening. Ressurection and healing is there, but very gated by high MP and slow speed on healers
• Good initiative system. Faster units can take multiple turns before slower units move.
  
• Much unique and interesting equipment lategame
• Very good difficulty. I got killed roughly 1/hour of gametime. That is where an SRPG wants to be to not become either stressfull or boring.

As you can see this game does a lot of very important things right in my verdict. I had it at even during the midgame, as as soon as you unlock the elite classes combat gets really spicy. The game however shits the bed pretty hard in the lategame. Fair losses become rarer, as enemies can't keep up with the sheer amount of bullshit your units can pull. The last boss was an absolute cakewalk. To counteract this the game throws more and more bullshit in the way of unfair objective changes and reinforcements your way. Losing a mission that you have been dominating because 5 assassins spawn next to the NPC you have to escort and butcher him before you get a turn is bullshit, as you just replay the mission the exact same way but position your doods around the enemy before triggering the reinforcements by opening a gate. The hidden information also gets worse the further you get. There is a bossfight against the doctor Skeksis fought in a relatively new terrain, high gras. In this you can't be targeted except from tiles in melee range. The boss has a special skill when he enters his last form, a very powerfull chain lightning. Now the obvious solution should be to use the high grass tiles to not give him any targets for chain lightning and slowly advance closer, and then rush him to death. But his chain lightning conveniently ignores the terrain restriction you have to deal with, and wiped me without any warning. Also you can't see enemy resistances to status effects, which can really fuck you over in some fights.

TLDR: Good game for most of the playtime, fails in the final hours due to massive bullshit. Only play if you have seen the series or really like FFT style tactics games. Surprisingly competent for a licensed game.

 

[Thac0]

Also why the fuck is this in GRPG? It is a western made JRPG, stealing most mechanics from classical SRPGs. If the much more western influenced, western made Voidspire Tactics is in the JRPG subforum for SRPG elements this belongs there aswell.

 

[Darth Canoli]

Thac0 Thanks for the analysis/review, makes me want to play it, will probably do sometimes this year.

 

[Thac0]

Thac0 Thanks for the analysis/review, makes me want to play it, will probably do sometimes this year.

It was definitly worth the 8 Eurobucks I paid for it. I wouldn't recommend it if more expensive.
I like the movie tho, and thought the series was servicable, so the game gained a lot of goodwill from that.
I am not sure if I would recommend it to you, since you can be quite picky, but I think it is better than Solasta in its current state while being much cheaper for example.
Surprisingly since my November Steam haul it was the first game that actually motivated me to finish it. Definitly an underdog.

Spoiler

Mostly bought it because of the scathing review from Jim "Amorphous Blob" Sterling, since it was very obvious that he did not know what he was talking about with the review.

 

[Darth Canoli]

It was definitly worth the 8 Eurobucks I paid for it. I wouldn't recommend it if more expensive.
I like the movie tho, and thought the series was servicable, so the game gained a lot of goodwill from that.
I am not sure if I would recommend it to you, since you can be quite picky, but I think it is better than Solasta in its current state while being much cheaper for example.
Surprisingly since my November Steam haul it was the first game that actually motivated me to finish it. Definitly an underdog.

As long as the combat is good, i'm willing to try it.
I'm not going to buy it unless i find it at 50% off at least, i didn't like the series that much (stopped after a couple of episodes) and didn't watch the movie either.

Still, i play a lot of crap, just not for long, if it's not my thing, i stop below the one hour count...
I don't leave a bad review for it though, except if it's an overrated blockbuster with 10/100K reviews and even then, most of the time i don't bother.
I'd rather rant about it around these parts.

 

[Darth Canoli]

So, i tried it, it's not bad but their engine is a bit clunky, i kind of like it but i didn't get far.

After a couple of fights:

• The skill limit is retarded, in a tactical game, i want tactical options, 3 skills, really? It's probably more later with the secondary class but still, is there an increase to the max number of class skill you can "equip"?
• Ergonomic design isn't really their thing, when a character gets a turn, it should be on move mode already, instead, i have to click him (is it not his turn, fuck, why isn't he already selected?), then click move and then move, 3 clicks where they should be only one (character already selected in deplacment mode)
• Also, about movement, it's nice to be able to cancel your movement but it's better to move freely within your movement range like in the Shining Force series (released 25 years ago or so), if your engine is not perfectly optimized, QoL features are even more important.
  
• So far, it's nice because of the settings but not very challenging and the skill number limitations is already a nuisance by the time you reach level 3 (2 fights).

So, i'm not very optimistic for encased but hopefully, they'll improve, a lot...

 

[Darth Canoli]

I played a bit more before giving up.
The first boss fight was fun, you're supposed to flee but it's possible to kill him and it's quite challenging.

The second boss, is just a normal mob with HP bloat (the hunter) dealing the same damage as you, even less than your fighter if you bought a good weapon.
Also, when his HP go below 50% he starts to jump out of the screen to fall on your party but it takes a couple of turns and the aoe is clearly drawn on the battlefield so you just have to get out, wait and hit him when he falls.
It's so fucking retarded I have no words...

There is some lava pits around and you can push him there (he has 1K HP) and he takes 120 or 150 HP damage a turn while he in there but of course, he doesn't have any way of pushing you, which would have made the fight challenging and his 3 acolytes are push-overs.

So, the terrible engine and clunky UI was bad, now this, well, I'm done with Dark Crystal, either they have no clue on how to design a tactical game or they put zero efforts into it.

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

Rushed perhaps from the hype of the netflix show?

 

[grimace]

Are there other bugs that will go unpatched?

Patch Needed for Dark Crystal Age of Resistance​

Misc
Hey, you probably remember me asking about the stats for the Switch Game of Age of Resistance. Well, if any of the developers are reading this, there is a patch needed ASAP for a terrible bug.
We found that we could make our Grave Dancer have both Spot Weakness and Death’s Instinct at the same time. Theoretically, this means we can mark a target, and then use Death’s Instinct over and over. The mark on the target consumed by Death’s Instinct should come back immediately after thanks to Spot Weakness. The animation for the mark shows up, and there is a little arrow above their head, but the enemy isn’t actually marked.
All we want to do is break this game, and the bug won’t let us!

 

[grimace]

either they have no clue on how to design a tactical game or they put zero efforts into it.

The team knows exactly what THEY are doing.

https://abload.de/img/bogusxpteamfvonwvcwaalcf8w.jpg

the bogus XP team prides themselves in their works

https://abload.de/img/bogusxpteamfvonwvcwaalcf8w.jpg

Spoiler

Zane not insane?