Playing the Past and Future
I finally caught Kingdom Come: Deliverance at a discount that made it appealing enough to go and sink some time into. I'd heard enough about it that I wasn't really surprised by any of the game elements (not that I knew much in the way of story detail). As a game, its strengths and weaknesses heavily overlap and whether they're seen as good or bad (or both) is entirely a matter of perspective.
It shares a very basic level of commonality with open world fantasy RPGs like Skyrim. But it's not fantasy - it's almost-slavishly devoted to a realistic depiction of feudal Bohemia. The closest thing to magic would be the potions (that have to be brewed by following steps at a workbench or purchased) that give a few temporary stat bonuses or some other minor benefit like allowing you to save without exiting. Melee combat has a lot of little details and it's very easy to be overwhelmed by more than one opponents. Archery has no reticle. Stats and skills increase slowly by use or a little bit by paid training. Food and rest need to be managed, though they didn't strike me as terribly burdensome. Lockpicking is devilishly difficult (until you get the perk that makes picks more durable, then it gets oddly easy).
And you start it all off as a basic, skillless blacksmith's son who can't even read.
If you can ignore or appreciate how unfriendly some of the systems are designed to be, there's a great potential for feeling the growth of RPG increases. Learning to read opens up stories and some skill books. Sufficient increases to stats and skills can make some tasks that seemed impossible much easier. One of the DLC packs even lets you work to revitalize a ruined town from a bandit hideout to something profitable (for boatloads of money).
The story leans heavily into historical conflicts of the time period. I was fairly interested in taking Henry from "lucky" survivor of an invasion to a genuinely useful aid to a local knight/lord.
But... I think I may have hit my wall with it. I finished out the re-buildable town DLC (funded largely by repeated armor scavenging-and-selling trips). I ended up surviving a few difficult encounters by virtue of backing up and shooting arrows at point blank range rather than being able to use the melee system well. But after having to reload a few sections many times to get past, progressing the story feels more burdensome than rewarding.
Even if I don't play further, I think I got my money's worth. And it's something I would recommend or not based on how appealing a game like that sounds - it'll definitely suit some people more than others.
"... there is only war." I don't know why, but I stumbled across the trailer for Warhammer 40,000's 9th Edition release a little bit ago and this lead to me looking at W40K Inquisitor: Martyr/Prophesy, an action RPG set in that over-the-top setting. I pondered that for a few days before it popped back up for sale and then purchased.
As a game, I've found it perfectly fine. Classes, passives, main abilities based on weapon type, lots of non-story missions available via tileset-based procedural generation, several enemy factions and unit types, loot drops, drop/reward boxes, crafting, socketing... it has pretty much everything one would expect from an ARPG. Unusually, it has a cover system (that I barely used) and was designed to be a bit slower than most of its peers.
The story... well... I'm not a W40K expert. I have a rough overview of the settings and some narrow areas of deeper knowledge, but the lore built up in that game(s) is overwhelming. I have a certain fondness for 40K, but I don't for a second say it isn't ridiculously bombastic.
This game places the player as a human Imperial Inquisitor - a position outside and above most chains of command - investigating a ship that appeared from out of the Warp after thousands of years. This turns into fighting daemonic invasions and other factions while uncovering a project to create someone with the power to kill (rather than just disperse/banish) Chaos beings. That's interesting and could theoretically have massive repercussions on the setting... but so could many other story threads that have been out there, and this one resolves in an inconclusive fashion. Personally, I don't see any conflicts with existing canon - but again, not expert.
I generally liked the journey and I think it's thoroughly steeped in the atmosphere of the setting. Not a bad shooty-romp, though leveling slows remarkably around 50, so I doubt I'll keep into it enough to grind post-story stuff on to the cap at level 100.
It shares a very basic level of commonality with open world fantasy RPGs like Skyrim. But it's not fantasy - it's almost-slavishly devoted to a realistic depiction of feudal Bohemia. The closest thing to magic would be the potions (that have to be brewed by following steps at a workbench or purchased) that give a few temporary stat bonuses or some other minor benefit like allowing you to save without exiting. Melee combat has a lot of little details and it's very easy to be overwhelmed by more than one opponents. Archery has no reticle. Stats and skills increase slowly by use or a little bit by paid training. Food and rest need to be managed, though they didn't strike me as terribly burdensome. Lockpicking is devilishly difficult (until you get the perk that makes picks more durable, then it gets oddly easy).
And you start it all off as a basic, skillless blacksmith's son who can't even read.
If you can ignore or appreciate how unfriendly some of the systems are designed to be, there's a great potential for feeling the growth of RPG increases. Learning to read opens up stories and some skill books. Sufficient increases to stats and skills can make some tasks that seemed impossible much easier. One of the DLC packs even lets you work to revitalize a ruined town from a bandit hideout to something profitable (for boatloads of money).
The story leans heavily into historical conflicts of the time period. I was fairly interested in taking Henry from "lucky" survivor of an invasion to a genuinely useful aid to a local knight/lord.
But... I think I may have hit my wall with it. I finished out the re-buildable town DLC (funded largely by repeated armor scavenging-and-selling trips). I ended up surviving a few difficult encounters by virtue of backing up and shooting arrows at point blank range rather than being able to use the melee system well. But after having to reload a few sections many times to get past, progressing the story feels more burdensome than rewarding.
Even if I don't play further, I think I got my money's worth. And it's something I would recommend or not based on how appealing a game like that sounds - it'll definitely suit some people more than others.
"... there is only war." I don't know why, but I stumbled across the trailer for Warhammer 40,000's 9th Edition release a little bit ago and this lead to me looking at W40K Inquisitor: Martyr/Prophesy, an action RPG set in that over-the-top setting. I pondered that for a few days before it popped back up for sale and then purchased.
As a game, I've found it perfectly fine. Classes, passives, main abilities based on weapon type, lots of non-story missions available via tileset-based procedural generation, several enemy factions and unit types, loot drops, drop/reward boxes, crafting, socketing... it has pretty much everything one would expect from an ARPG. Unusually, it has a cover system (that I barely used) and was designed to be a bit slower than most of its peers.
The story... well... I'm not a W40K expert. I have a rough overview of the settings and some narrow areas of deeper knowledge, but the lore built up in that game(s) is overwhelming. I have a certain fondness for 40K, but I don't for a second say it isn't ridiculously bombastic.
This game places the player as a human Imperial Inquisitor - a position outside and above most chains of command - investigating a ship that appeared from out of the Warp after thousands of years. This turns into fighting daemonic invasions and other factions while uncovering a project to create someone with the power to kill (rather than just disperse/banish) Chaos beings. That's interesting and could theoretically have massive repercussions on the setting... but so could many other story threads that have been out there, and this one resolves in an inconclusive fashion. Personally, I don't see any conflicts with existing canon - but again, not expert.
I generally liked the journey and I think it's thoroughly steeped in the atmosphere of the setting. Not a bad shooty-romp, though leveling slows remarkably around 50, so I doubt I'll keep into it enough to grind post-story stuff on to the cap at level 100.
Action RPG huh? How did it feel compared to others in the genre?
ReplyDeleteMy experience is limited, but... about the same?
DeleteI made a ranged character and dinked around a little with weapons, but primarily settled on a sniper rifle. I mostly relied on a regular shot, an explosive AOE shot, and a targeted sniper shot (which has a little charge up time for additional damage and possible headshot kill on many enemies). Play for me settled into a pretty regular formula with those three abilities and occasional uses of grenades, self-heal, dodge, or defensive cooldown. That's similar to what I did in Grim Dawn, or Diablo(s) as archer/demonslayer types.
A much higher percentages of the maps are near-linear corridors than open areas. Each individual mission was... I dunno... 15 minutes, give or take depending on difficulty, before bouncing back to the command deck hub, so it's a bit more bite-sized than "clear your way across the map to the next checkpoint" as in most ARPGs. That may actually be the most distinct difference in my opinion.
Maybe it's all due to the rebalancing, but I didn't find it actually play much slower than others and could progress fairly steadily through maps at-level. Though you can take on missions of higher difficulty above your level and I started failing pretty hard around +6, as each level higher applies a damage reduction to you and bonus to enemies.
Leveling felt fairly good up until around 50, as I said, after which is slows down markedly and feels grindy. After the main story, expansion story, and the "season" stories they added, I was... 60-ish? Dipping into other mission type here and there, I've hit 65, I believe. Loot drops could stand to be a bit better in my opinion - the last few times I upgraded my weapon were all crafting upgrades rather than drops, for example. If the levels and loot were a bit easier to come by, it would probably get a few more hours of play out of me (and maybe less out of serious, long-term players).