The Dungeon of Naheulbeuk - parodic fantasy tactical RPG - now with Back to the Futon DLC

[Erebus]

Some are usable, but I'd take other passive skills over them most of the time. You rarely fight as a coherent party for long, you'll get the bonus for the first turn or two and then usually not, mobility is far more important than triggering the buff. That's not even mentioning enemies with large aoe attacks or debuffs.
Passives that require a squishy character to be next to a front-line character are too situational, you want melee to move and engage, and support characters far from most enemies because they get knocked out very fast. It's better for melee characters because they'll support each other more often, but even then if you can get a passive skill with a pure stat bonus (like +to hit) or one with a bigger bonus that requires a specific character's support, the one that works all the time is better.

I fully agree. The buffs will trigger too rarely to be worth it (unless the player ignores much more important tactical considerations in order to trigger them as much as possible).

The Priestess has a passive skill that give her +10 to Astral Regeneration if she's next to the Wizardess. That one is almost worth it, as those characters might remain close together (and away from melee) most of the time. But I'd still much rather give her the passive skill that grants her a permanent +5 to Astral Regeneration.

The Thief has passive skill that actually grants him a bonus to Critical Chance if he's not next to another hero. That one's pretty decent, as the condition is much easier to fulfill.

 

[fantadomat]

Are the support related passive skills worth it? Shit like "when elf is next to ogre, she gains +X impact".

some are,depends on your build

 

[Dr Skeleton]

The Priestess has a passive skill that give her +10 to Astral Regeneration if she's next to the Wizardess.

I got that one eventually (after the generic + regeneration) and it was active a lot of the time, but mana/stamina is rarely an issue, over the course of the main game and the DLCs I've had only a handful of situations where I couldn't cast what I wanted, and that was after unloading spells for multiple turns, and even then you can use a default attack (which should do a debuff or have a chance for an effect, or finish off a wounded enemy) or use a belt item for one turn and you can go back to casting again after that. The priestess also sometimes needs to move more aggressively to heal knocked out characters, so even if it was needed I don't think it would be possible to keep up the wizardess support bonus consistently.

The Thief has passive skill that actually grants him a bonus to Critical Chance if he's not next to another hero. That one's pretty decent, as the condition is much easier to fulfill.

Yup.

The dwarf also has a skill that deals high damage, but requires multiple party members support, but it's not very useful outside of some very high hp bosses, like the demon in the main dungeon or the futon DLC final boss.

 

[Parabalus]

I found the ones which change initiative useful, e.g. for the ogre, it so you can make him go before or after the dwarf depending on the encounter.

 

[Erebus]

I got that one eventually (after the generic + regeneration) and it was active a lot of the time, but mana/stamina is rarely an issue,

Stamina can be an issue for the Thief and the Elf, as both characters initially have very low Stamina Regeneration. If the player neglects to increase their Constitution (which might seem tempting at first glance), they might find their options limited after 5-6 turns of combat.

In difficult fights, the Priestess can be at risk of running out of fuel after using too many healing spells. The passive skills that increase her Astral Energy and her AE Regeneration are really useful to ensure that doesn't happen (and I also like to give her the pendant that gives +10 to AE Regeneration).

The Wizardess doesn't have the same problem, as she can use her vampiric spell to regain a fair amount of AE.

I found the ones which change initiative useful, e.g. for the ogre, it so you can make him go before or after the dwarf depending on the encounter.

As soon as I get the Dwarf Throw skill, I almost always use it on the first round of combat. Consequently, I always try to have the Initiative of the Ogre be slightly better than the Initiative of the Dwarf, so the Dwarf can act very quickly after being thrown into melee.

At one point in the main campaign, that becomes a bit difficult, as the Dwarf will get several items that increase his Courage (and thus his Initiative). Having ways to boost the Ogre's Initiative during the first round might then be useful.

 

[OSK]

I'm up to chapter 4 and facing tons of enemies that just throw bombs at me and I'm wondering why I would ever want my dudes to be together. I was wondering if it changes at all late-game.

The final DLC introduces sleep where you do want your guys together so they can wake each other up.

 

[Erebus]

The final DLC introduces sleep where you do want your guys together so they can wake each other up.

But not too close, as some enemies have a spell that'll put to sleep everyone around them. On a few occasions, I saw three of my characters put to sleep with just one spell.

 

[OSK]

The final DLC introduces sleep where you do want your guys together so they can wake each other up.

But not too close, as some enemies have a spell that'll put to sleep everyone around them. On a few occasions, I saw three of my characters put to sleep with just one spell.

For most of those battles I just kept my entire party grouped together. Even if they put half my party to sleep, the other half would wake them up.

 

[Modron]

Any of you waiting for a big discount/on the fence can grab this for a steal right now: https://www.fanatical.com/en/pick-and-mix/platinum-collection-build-your-own-bundle

 

[Lacrymas]

No need to be on the fence, it's a good gaem.

 

[GentlemanCthulhu]

Seriously whoever named this game needs a good beating. Anyways, I started playing it. So far so good. Playing on second to last difficulty. Already quite challenging. I am enjoying the fights and the content quite a bit, but the navigation is full-on retardo-mode.

 

[Lagole Gon]

I sit on 10k gold and have nothing to spend it on.
I assume that without the cleric an on higher difficulty, I would spend more on consumables. But this is still weird.
Will I ever get any gear worth buying in shops?

 

[Parabalus]

I sit on 10k gold and have nothing to spend it on.
I assume that without the cleric an on higher difficulty, I would spend more on consumables. But this is still weird.
Will I ever get anything any gear worth buying in shops?

Yeah, especially in the DLCs.

 

[Lagole Gon]

Eh.
The secret boss has no interesting loot. I already had that barbarian armor.
Welp. I'm going to beat the game tomorrow, probably.

A neat game overall. Cringey highschool humor made me feel nostalgic.

 

[Lagole Gon]

DLCs completed.
Overall, I liked it a lot. I guess tactics really *is* the new RPG.

Some random thoughts:
- When the original audio show was created, meta humor and the fourth wall breaking was probably fresh and inventive. But currently, I'm so fucking sick of it. I'm fine with chicken jokes. I'm fine with toilet jokes. I actually love the dorf jokes. But meta humor was a mistake.
- Support and related skills are nearly useless. You will only use these mechanics in very early game. And maybe in the DLC - some epic support skills are fine.

Anyway, I hope we will see more.

 

[Dr Skeleton]

The humor is hit or miss, but it never got so bad that I'd want to quit the game, so whatever, that's just the convention this setting has, I can live with it. It's pretty embarrassing that a parody of the genre has better gameplay than most "serious" games these days. I chuckled at some things, but it was mostly random episodes like the cursed Orktoberfest loop, the demon being cursed to not use the stairs, or some of the bits in the lore books, some jokes go on for way too long, like the cursed library being a bureaucratic nightmare or the union strikes in the futon DLC.

I agree on the support skills, but support itself is hardly useless. It gets less and less important later in the game because the overall accuracy improves, but for characters like the barbarian or the ogre it's good to have another fighter's support when possible.

 

[Lagole Gon]

Oh, I don't mind the humor overall. I'm just tired of the meta humor parts.

Most of it is charming, in that "Man, I wish could send it back in time to the teenager me, he would be rolling on the ground laughing". Just dumb fun. No commentary on anything. Feels almost... nostalgic?

And then there's the Dwarf. I fucking love him. And his axe throw epic skill is fucking brilliant.

 

[std::namespace]

shamefully admitting: i never finished this
reinstalled, remembered how important rng is, checked how its generated
turns out its using a crypto-graphically secure windows api, not a pseudo rng generator, kinda cute
though i have not further checked if it fudges the rolls afterwards lul

The CryptGenRandom function fills a buffer with cryptographically random bytes.

i wanted to hook the api-call and count the rolls and plot them in a histogram in imgui kek, to see how evenly distributed they are ^^
but the number of rolls per fight are too low ...

technically i could count how often i rolled above the expected in a fight
so if i hit once on a 53% roll - that means i'm above expected by 0.47 and so forth for each attack
but my guess is that i'm always gonna be above
but its also was too time intensive to find where the % to hit was stored...

 

[luj1]

If whoever needs a "parodic RPG" just play Baldurs Gate 3

 

[std::namespace]

jesus, i knew it was coming but fug...
imagine if you picked something else than heals and disables...

 

[Grunker]

jesus, i knew it was coming but fug...
imagine if you picked something else than heals and disables...

good news is, if you can beat that fight you can beat the game

also are you playing on highest diff? otherwise no sympathy

 

[std::namespace]

yeah, gz0r
took me like 5 tries and shamefully using the """anti-random""" heal on the winning one...
im suspecting that the game fudges hit rolls to the players benefit

it was a great tactikewl fight
initial placement:

TURN1
ranger who moves first has to rush and facetank and die either the left or right knight to stop the aoe bullshit
the top knight sprints into a trap and gets stunned by ogre (game deciding rng 1!)
bottom knight immobilized by thief
right knight cant reach engagement even with sprint
TURN2
juggling heals to raise the ranger and raise whoever might get killed
ogre,dwarf,assassin try to kill the stunned topknight, dwarf even has a knock down disable (maybe game deciding rng 2!)
ranger,barb,wiz,elf try to focus down the 50% phy resist left knight... (a crit from a barb here would be game deciding rng 3, happened once for me but i lost anyway)
...
TURN3
juggling heals... praying the right knight doesnt aoe, i think i put the assassin into his back and he turned around
...
i actually killed the left knight only on turn 5... the same turn i killed the bottom knight, who ate a knockdown (maybe game deciding rng)
and then the right knight with full 152 hp disengnaged (probably to try the aoe attack) and failed the stun vs ogre... kek

Spoiler

bad rolls and you lose and die

good rolls and you win

and the ai even does a weird disengage, eating aoo

 

[Erebus]

I tried the game on Nightmare with only the seven original characters (ie, no Priestess, Paladin or Minstrel). It's not that much more difficult, but some fights were definitely tougher than usual and I might have lost if the RNG had been against me.

The only time I came extremely close to defeat was the fight against Losax. Near its end, most of my tougher characters were losing around 100 hp at the beginning of each turn and my healing abilities/potions just couldn't keep up. I got Losax down to about 200 hp, but five of my heroes got KOed in short succession, leaving only the Elf and the Wizardess, both wounded and out of potions. If the Wizardess hadn't then scored a critical hit on a Fireball, I'm not sure I would have been able to win.

 

[skaraher]

Oh, I don't mind the humor overall. I'm just tired of the meta humor parts.

Most of it is charming, in that "Man, I wish could send it back in time to the teenager me, he would be rolling on the ground laughing". Just dumb fun. No commentary on anything. Feels almost... nostalgic?

And then there's the Dwarf. I fucking love him. And his axe throw epic skill is fucking brilliant.

Well the whole series it's adapted from is meta humor and private jokes about DnD players and the french scene.