Pope Amole II
Nerd Commando Game Studios
- Joined
- Mar 1, 2012
- Messages
- 2,052
Wanted to post in a "what game are you wasitng time on" thread, but this rant got out of hand and turned into a mini-review. So thread it is.
A huge disappointment it was. You see, in the first ten hours or so, I fell in love with the game and thought it was totally awesome. However, the deeper I looked into its mechanics, the more disillusioned I became with it until that grow up in a pretty much straightforward disgust. So what are its problems?
1. Unlocks. We'll start with the least one but nevertheless, unlocks. Now, as the general idea, I'm not against them and they can be done pretty cool - I loved unlocks in the Streets of Rage: Remake because they really added to the playthroughs. It was fun to search for the secrets, to learn which route was the most profitable and, since the shop there was absolutely controllable, once you've earned all that cash, you got precisely what you've desired (i.e., new characters).
Here, however, perks & items unlock in a somewhat random fashion and you're not guaranteed to open an interesting one (not to mention that even if you do, you're not guaranteed to get it during the level ups, but that's the next problem). And characters just take too much time to unlock. Now, I've been stupid and I've tried to unlock them in normal mode (you should go easy - that produces faster results on that front), but still, it took me 12 hours of play with the boring disciple to get even someone remotely interesting (the harlequin). And, after that, it took me even more time to unlock the character whom I actually liked (the librarian). I mean, it's not a fucking facebook game so what's the point?
2. Randomness. Yeah, sure, roguelikes are supposed to be random and shit. But there are degrees to anything. And good roguelikes are supposed to be governed by the skill, first and foremost, and chance should always play secondary role. Anything else is just an excuse for poor design skills. And here... What slaughtered the game for me is the understanding that your skill means nothing and your luck with items and perks means everything. Well, I'm overstating - skill means a lot and you're not going through the hard difficulty without it. BTW, only 0.4% denizens of the steam have the achievement for going through the game on the hard - it is really hard. Even normal is not easy to conquer. But why?
First factor is that the majority of the game's weapons are either plain trash or just too narrow to go through the game with. You start the game with just one serious weapon, you 1 new weapon at the beginning of each level (out of 5) and even here you can get easily screwed - there are 3 weapon types and you can carry only 1 of each. So if at the beginning of level 2 you're getting the same type you had at lvl 1, chances are you're fucked up - you can use only 1 mana pool that way and so you'll just run out of ammo and die. Some broken perks/chars can prevent that, but otherwise things are grim. But let's return to the weapons balance - I won't be lazy and even list all the shit that's in the game:
Firestorm Grenade - ok for cleaning up trashmobs, but damage is too low against the bosses.
Magma Rifle - one of the most broken weapons in the game, short range burst devastates pretty much everything and it's quite economical, easy win.
Hellish ember - mediocre shotgun, not that good against the bosses.
Frozen Soul - ditto.
Eye of Twilight - ok against the bosses, but useless if you are swarmed.
Undead Scepter - ok if you are swarmed, useless against the bosses (and believe me, you need both capabilities from your first weapon).
Frostbow - bad against the bosses and wonky flight trajectory makes it not that good against the ordinary stuff.
Fireweaver bomb - does more harm to you that to your enemies.
Porcupine Bomb - unlike other grenades, doesn't harm you if thrown point-blank, does insane poison damage to everything, really cheap and efficient. Begin to see the problem here?
Wraith Rings - auto-aiming, huge damage, huge range, good against everything. Stuns ordinary enemies.
Skull of Thanatos - just a weaker version of the previous one. Does pretty much the same stuff (except for the stun), but at the weaker rate. Has slight AoE damage, though. Still decent.
Viper Fangs - like the hellish ember, but less damage and with poison. Nice to have if you don't have any other source of poison, but sucks as the only weapon.
Serpent Staff - another poison backup weapon. This one is kinda ok against trashmobs, but sucks against bosses.
Scarab Beetle Staff - above mediocre, good in tight rooms and not that horrible in focusing bosses.
Eagle Staff - mediocre. Good vs strong solitary enemies (but not bosses - runs out of mana fast vs them), but that's it.
Magma Blaster - a shitty version of magma rifle. More expensive & more clunky.
Anguish Cannon - superb version against all kinds of mobs and even decent against the bosses, good stuff.
Flame Mortar - like the fireweaver bomb, it's much more efficient against yourself than against enemies.
Archangel's Embrace - the trajectory of this weapon is so retarded & pointless. It can be uset point blank, I guess, but otherwise it's incredibly crappy.
Bloodlust Needles - Wraith Rings 2.0. Pretty much the same stuff and as good as them.
Whirlwind of Ulthar - similar to the Anguish Cannon, but worse as it can't hit flying enemies well. SInce there are plenty of fliers in the game, it's quite mediocre because of that.
Solar Staff - kinda sniper rifle. OK against bosses (not that great, though), but, as you're figthing hordes of mobes usually and small rooms are very often, sniper rifle is hardly desired in such environment.
Nikola's Surge - total shit. Bad at everything.
Staff of Atlantis - pretty good against the ordinary stuff, ok against bosses. One of the better staffs, I guess.
Dark Cannon - worse version of Anguish Cannon. More difficult to hit and you can harm yourself with it.
Polar Blast - as shitty as the Fireweaver Bomb.
Catapult of Doom - another shitty version of Magma Rifle (yeah, that's also an issue with this game - lots of weapons, as you see, but most of them are just better/worse version of the same thing).
Arcane Storm - shit because it's way easy to miss with it.
Dragon Bile - poisonous flamethrower. Kinda ok for cleaning small rooms, but useless versus the bosses so a secondary weapon.
Enchanted Butterflies - Wraith Rings 3.0. As good as they are.
Divine Wrath - very good damage but also very high mana cost and shitty long range accuracy. Don't like it that much.
Power of Heart - wonky shit. Kinda ok for cleaning tight rooms, but sucks at everything else.
Gemini Staff - mediocre.
So, as you can see, out of 33 weapons only 6 or 7 can be actually called good. Yeah, sure, you can fight through ordinary situations with the average ones (though shitty are useless even there), but it's not the ordinary situations that kill you. And once I understood that, I've just started to restart my runs until I got a decent first weapons - because it's incredibly disappointing to lose with a great character only because your weapons are shit and lack whatever it takes to solve the tight spot you're in. Generally speaking, that's the burst & the AoE damage. That may not be fair, but it's not like this game itself is fair.
Another flaw, of course, is the weapon variety and the fact that, despite being a fucking PC FPS, the game is geared around the gamepad. Mind you, I'm not a hater and my own "Caelum" I prefer to test with the gamepad, but shmup is one thing and FPS is completely another. And so the weapons totally suffer because they are built around crappy controls - at least that's my theory. And there's little precision or skill against them - the trifecta of Wraith Rings-Blood Needles-Enchanted Butterflies requires no skill at all, for example. You just spam them and everything dies. Porcupine Bomb and Magma Rifle are only marginally harder to use. Staves... Well, they demand you to aim at your foes directly, at least - that takes some skill, right?
Next thing is traits. Now, there are about a hundred of them and I won't be describing them here, of course (I'll make a funbuilding about that - that was my initial point of playing the game), but the situation there is extremely similar to the weapons - roughly a third of them is pretty good (though some are situational), and the rest range between slightly favorable, barely noticeable and actually harmful. You gain a choice between two perks each level up and, for each particular run, only a limited pool of perks is available (20 out of 100? Looks somewhere around that number). So, before you even know it, the success of your run is absolutely defined by your pregenerated pool - if it's shit then you're pretty much busted. Now, some characters are less susceptible to that (like the Templar who's both tanky and has no mana problems by default), but most require a very precise succession of perks to work out.
And I'm not even talking about all levels - I'm talking about even early levels. For example, squishies like Cid, Jules or Osuna are absolutely dependent on getting anything (actually, quite a lot of everything - at least a couple of perks) to boost their poor health. Cid, in addition to that, also requires something to fix his shitty mana pool. And if you don't get that - sure, you'll probably survive past first two levels. But then it's one bad room and you're toasted.
And bad rooms are aplenty. Extremely small places, filled with 3 or 4 tough, slow to take and really hurty monsters like those flying drakes. Narrow rooms filled with a dozen and a half of puking pink flamingoes (which aren't that divine) - the floor becomes covered with acid and your 60 hp character has pretty much nowhere to run. Rooms with plenty of AoE foes and either choke points or very high grounds which you're supposed to storm. Good old "enemy spawns from behind". Guided projectiles, shot at you from behind (shamans are especially good at that). Obelisk rooms in cases where you have no burst weapons (or just with certain kinds of spawns). Demons in tight quarters.
All peppered up by the special encounters - invested a shitload of perks in your weapons? Wand room, use only your crappy wand, but it deals 2x damage! Dark room - you can't see shit! Wet Floors - you can't really dodge because your movemen is sloppy! Quad Damage - you and your foes deal 4x damage, only you're in a tight room and there's a shitload of AoE damage dealers!
You can call this all whining, of course. But I dunno. I love "git gud" games. I want to design them myself. But I don't see anything skill related to this - surviving such situations are nothing about dodging or shooting properly or whatnot. After all, if the entire fucking rooms is a source of AoE damage, how do you dodge that? The key to such rooms is absolutely in having good burst damage (so you kill that shit ASAP) and having good defences (which, for the majority of characters, are obtained only through perks). And the problem is that both of those are random. Very random.
And, mind you, once you get powerful enough to survive such encounters, the game becomes trivial for you. Because, while you may feel difficulties in them, it's just 1-2 room per run. And everywhere else you're just an unkillable demigod who slaughters everything without even looking at their side. Which is what kills the game for me - you pretty much take a couple of your first level up and by that point it becomes crystally clear whether your character will suck or rock. Since chances for the latter are not that huge it's mostly the "oh, this one is shit too, let's abandon this crap". Because why suffer with getting this character somewhere if you know that an insane room will occur and all will be to naught?
Random also sucks because, while you can unlock all the perks you wish, you're not guaranteed to get them. And, since many of them shine only on selected characters, the chances of you experiencing them (without putting hundred of hours into game) are miserable. So, while there are lots of stuff to try, theoretically, practically you will have only what the game will allow you to have.
All that also makes the hard mode pointless, btw. In reality, monsters there deal so much damage that, unless you have ungodly reflexes, you can't survive. There's a reason why, in the top-100 charts, for the majority of characters only 20 or so people have finished the game on hard. But, in reality, it's not about skill. Or, rather, very nominally about it. In reality, it's all about restarting the game until you get some stupid shit like Regeneration+Unnatural Strength in your first level ups (for Vampire & Templar, Regeneration alone will be enough). Or broken book + Talented Spellcaster for the librarian + some defensive perks (and some other stuff to do while you wait for the mana to regen after each battle). Etc., etc.
I haven't mentioned the characters, I guess, but they're all fine and have their own nice (and, more importantly, interesting) combos. Too bad you have to be lucky to get those combos. And that summarizes the game for me - it's extremely disappointing because, while it looks skill-intensive, in reality it's just an RNG-fest. Which, if you manage your time investment properly (restart if weapons are bad, restart if starting perks are bad), you can control and can probably go through the hard even if you don't have the APM of a Quake pro, but really, what's the point?
A huge disappointment it was. You see, in the first ten hours or so, I fell in love with the game and thought it was totally awesome. However, the deeper I looked into its mechanics, the more disillusioned I became with it until that grow up in a pretty much straightforward disgust. So what are its problems?
1. Unlocks. We'll start with the least one but nevertheless, unlocks. Now, as the general idea, I'm not against them and they can be done pretty cool - I loved unlocks in the Streets of Rage: Remake because they really added to the playthroughs. It was fun to search for the secrets, to learn which route was the most profitable and, since the shop there was absolutely controllable, once you've earned all that cash, you got precisely what you've desired (i.e., new characters).
Here, however, perks & items unlock in a somewhat random fashion and you're not guaranteed to open an interesting one (not to mention that even if you do, you're not guaranteed to get it during the level ups, but that's the next problem). And characters just take too much time to unlock. Now, I've been stupid and I've tried to unlock them in normal mode (you should go easy - that produces faster results on that front), but still, it took me 12 hours of play with the boring disciple to get even someone remotely interesting (the harlequin). And, after that, it took me even more time to unlock the character whom I actually liked (the librarian). I mean, it's not a fucking facebook game so what's the point?
2. Randomness. Yeah, sure, roguelikes are supposed to be random and shit. But there are degrees to anything. And good roguelikes are supposed to be governed by the skill, first and foremost, and chance should always play secondary role. Anything else is just an excuse for poor design skills. And here... What slaughtered the game for me is the understanding that your skill means nothing and your luck with items and perks means everything. Well, I'm overstating - skill means a lot and you're not going through the hard difficulty without it. BTW, only 0.4% denizens of the steam have the achievement for going through the game on the hard - it is really hard. Even normal is not easy to conquer. But why?
First factor is that the majority of the game's weapons are either plain trash or just too narrow to go through the game with. You start the game with just one serious weapon, you 1 new weapon at the beginning of each level (out of 5) and even here you can get easily screwed - there are 3 weapon types and you can carry only 1 of each. So if at the beginning of level 2 you're getting the same type you had at lvl 1, chances are you're fucked up - you can use only 1 mana pool that way and so you'll just run out of ammo and die. Some broken perks/chars can prevent that, but otherwise things are grim. But let's return to the weapons balance - I won't be lazy and even list all the shit that's in the game:
Firestorm Grenade - ok for cleaning up trashmobs, but damage is too low against the bosses.
Magma Rifle - one of the most broken weapons in the game, short range burst devastates pretty much everything and it's quite economical, easy win.
Hellish ember - mediocre shotgun, not that good against the bosses.
Frozen Soul - ditto.
Eye of Twilight - ok against the bosses, but useless if you are swarmed.
Undead Scepter - ok if you are swarmed, useless against the bosses (and believe me, you need both capabilities from your first weapon).
Frostbow - bad against the bosses and wonky flight trajectory makes it not that good against the ordinary stuff.
Fireweaver bomb - does more harm to you that to your enemies.
Porcupine Bomb - unlike other grenades, doesn't harm you if thrown point-blank, does insane poison damage to everything, really cheap and efficient. Begin to see the problem here?
Wraith Rings - auto-aiming, huge damage, huge range, good against everything. Stuns ordinary enemies.
Skull of Thanatos - just a weaker version of the previous one. Does pretty much the same stuff (except for the stun), but at the weaker rate. Has slight AoE damage, though. Still decent.
Viper Fangs - like the hellish ember, but less damage and with poison. Nice to have if you don't have any other source of poison, but sucks as the only weapon.
Serpent Staff - another poison backup weapon. This one is kinda ok against trashmobs, but sucks against bosses.
Scarab Beetle Staff - above mediocre, good in tight rooms and not that horrible in focusing bosses.
Eagle Staff - mediocre. Good vs strong solitary enemies (but not bosses - runs out of mana fast vs them), but that's it.
Magma Blaster - a shitty version of magma rifle. More expensive & more clunky.
Anguish Cannon - superb version against all kinds of mobs and even decent against the bosses, good stuff.
Flame Mortar - like the fireweaver bomb, it's much more efficient against yourself than against enemies.
Archangel's Embrace - the trajectory of this weapon is so retarded & pointless. It can be uset point blank, I guess, but otherwise it's incredibly crappy.
Bloodlust Needles - Wraith Rings 2.0. Pretty much the same stuff and as good as them.
Whirlwind of Ulthar - similar to the Anguish Cannon, but worse as it can't hit flying enemies well. SInce there are plenty of fliers in the game, it's quite mediocre because of that.
Solar Staff - kinda sniper rifle. OK against bosses (not that great, though), but, as you're figthing hordes of mobes usually and small rooms are very often, sniper rifle is hardly desired in such environment.
Nikola's Surge - total shit. Bad at everything.
Staff of Atlantis - pretty good against the ordinary stuff, ok against bosses. One of the better staffs, I guess.
Dark Cannon - worse version of Anguish Cannon. More difficult to hit and you can harm yourself with it.
Polar Blast - as shitty as the Fireweaver Bomb.
Catapult of Doom - another shitty version of Magma Rifle (yeah, that's also an issue with this game - lots of weapons, as you see, but most of them are just better/worse version of the same thing).
Arcane Storm - shit because it's way easy to miss with it.
Dragon Bile - poisonous flamethrower. Kinda ok for cleaning small rooms, but useless versus the bosses so a secondary weapon.
Enchanted Butterflies - Wraith Rings 3.0. As good as they are.
Divine Wrath - very good damage but also very high mana cost and shitty long range accuracy. Don't like it that much.
Power of Heart - wonky shit. Kinda ok for cleaning tight rooms, but sucks at everything else.
Gemini Staff - mediocre.
So, as you can see, out of 33 weapons only 6 or 7 can be actually called good. Yeah, sure, you can fight through ordinary situations with the average ones (though shitty are useless even there), but it's not the ordinary situations that kill you. And once I understood that, I've just started to restart my runs until I got a decent first weapons - because it's incredibly disappointing to lose with a great character only because your weapons are shit and lack whatever it takes to solve the tight spot you're in. Generally speaking, that's the burst & the AoE damage. That may not be fair, but it's not like this game itself is fair.
Another flaw, of course, is the weapon variety and the fact that, despite being a fucking PC FPS, the game is geared around the gamepad. Mind you, I'm not a hater and my own "Caelum" I prefer to test with the gamepad, but shmup is one thing and FPS is completely another. And so the weapons totally suffer because they are built around crappy controls - at least that's my theory. And there's little precision or skill against them - the trifecta of Wraith Rings-Blood Needles-Enchanted Butterflies requires no skill at all, for example. You just spam them and everything dies. Porcupine Bomb and Magma Rifle are only marginally harder to use. Staves... Well, they demand you to aim at your foes directly, at least - that takes some skill, right?
Next thing is traits. Now, there are about a hundred of them and I won't be describing them here, of course (I'll make a funbuilding about that - that was my initial point of playing the game), but the situation there is extremely similar to the weapons - roughly a third of them is pretty good (though some are situational), and the rest range between slightly favorable, barely noticeable and actually harmful. You gain a choice between two perks each level up and, for each particular run, only a limited pool of perks is available (20 out of 100? Looks somewhere around that number). So, before you even know it, the success of your run is absolutely defined by your pregenerated pool - if it's shit then you're pretty much busted. Now, some characters are less susceptible to that (like the Templar who's both tanky and has no mana problems by default), but most require a very precise succession of perks to work out.
And I'm not even talking about all levels - I'm talking about even early levels. For example, squishies like Cid, Jules or Osuna are absolutely dependent on getting anything (actually, quite a lot of everything - at least a couple of perks) to boost their poor health. Cid, in addition to that, also requires something to fix his shitty mana pool. And if you don't get that - sure, you'll probably survive past first two levels. But then it's one bad room and you're toasted.
And bad rooms are aplenty. Extremely small places, filled with 3 or 4 tough, slow to take and really hurty monsters like those flying drakes. Narrow rooms filled with a dozen and a half of puking pink flamingoes (which aren't that divine) - the floor becomes covered with acid and your 60 hp character has pretty much nowhere to run. Rooms with plenty of AoE foes and either choke points or very high grounds which you're supposed to storm. Good old "enemy spawns from behind". Guided projectiles, shot at you from behind (shamans are especially good at that). Obelisk rooms in cases where you have no burst weapons (or just with certain kinds of spawns). Demons in tight quarters.
All peppered up by the special encounters - invested a shitload of perks in your weapons? Wand room, use only your crappy wand, but it deals 2x damage! Dark room - you can't see shit! Wet Floors - you can't really dodge because your movemen is sloppy! Quad Damage - you and your foes deal 4x damage, only you're in a tight room and there's a shitload of AoE damage dealers!
You can call this all whining, of course. But I dunno. I love "git gud" games. I want to design them myself. But I don't see anything skill related to this - surviving such situations are nothing about dodging or shooting properly or whatnot. After all, if the entire fucking rooms is a source of AoE damage, how do you dodge that? The key to such rooms is absolutely in having good burst damage (so you kill that shit ASAP) and having good defences (which, for the majority of characters, are obtained only through perks). And the problem is that both of those are random. Very random.
And, mind you, once you get powerful enough to survive such encounters, the game becomes trivial for you. Because, while you may feel difficulties in them, it's just 1-2 room per run. And everywhere else you're just an unkillable demigod who slaughters everything without even looking at their side. Which is what kills the game for me - you pretty much take a couple of your first level up and by that point it becomes crystally clear whether your character will suck or rock. Since chances for the latter are not that huge it's mostly the "oh, this one is shit too, let's abandon this crap". Because why suffer with getting this character somewhere if you know that an insane room will occur and all will be to naught?
Random also sucks because, while you can unlock all the perks you wish, you're not guaranteed to get them. And, since many of them shine only on selected characters, the chances of you experiencing them (without putting hundred of hours into game) are miserable. So, while there are lots of stuff to try, theoretically, practically you will have only what the game will allow you to have.
All that also makes the hard mode pointless, btw. In reality, monsters there deal so much damage that, unless you have ungodly reflexes, you can't survive. There's a reason why, in the top-100 charts, for the majority of characters only 20 or so people have finished the game on hard. But, in reality, it's not about skill. Or, rather, very nominally about it. In reality, it's all about restarting the game until you get some stupid shit like Regeneration+Unnatural Strength in your first level ups (for Vampire & Templar, Regeneration alone will be enough). Or broken book + Talented Spellcaster for the librarian + some defensive perks (and some other stuff to do while you wait for the mana to regen after each battle). Etc., etc.
I haven't mentioned the characters, I guess, but they're all fine and have their own nice (and, more importantly, interesting) combos. Too bad you have to be lucky to get those combos. And that summarizes the game for me - it's extremely disappointing because, while it looks skill-intensive, in reality it's just an RNG-fest. Which, if you manage your time investment properly (restart if weapons are bad, restart if starting perks are bad), you can control and can probably go through the hard even if you don't have the APM of a Quake pro, but really, what's the point?
