Finally got around to giving this game a go. I'd played it a bit on a friend's computer (while he hovered about over my shoulder making sure I didn't overwrite his precious save files) back when it released. Liked what I saw, popped it on the ol' wishlist and promptly forgot about it until recently when I found myself in need of some crap-to-fill-the-gap until XCOM2 comes out.
Now before I say anything else, let me be clear on one thing: the combat in this game is pretty cool. It's complex and challenging enough (so long as you jack up the difficulty) that you have to think about what you're doing. The whole elemental thing is pretty fun to play with, even if it's not as complex as it first appears. Plus there's a delightful element of chaos and unpredictability in the way that the various systems interact.
I made one of my characters a pyromancer-tank hybrid. Her roles was to put spikes on her shield, charge into the middle of the enemy mob, taunt aggro, set the ground around her on fire, set herself on fire, then sit there reflecting damage, igniting anyone who touched her and occasionally exploding. It was kind of glorious.
It also has amazingly solid and well implemented co-op. If you've ever wanted to play a turn-based isometric RPG stat-em-up with a friend of similar tastes then this is for you.
Oh, and it looks fairly pretty, if rather generic.
Those are the diamonds, see? Now brace yourselves, because here comes the shit.
First off, the narrative is shit.
The magical world of Every Fantasy Setting Ever is under threat by a mysterious cult who want to bring about the return of an Ancient Evil. Luckily you're The Special and, wouldn't you know it, only you can save the day by gathering the magic star stones of destiny and Jesus fucking Christ go crawl back to your DnD campaign you boring fucking hacks.
Now, that's not the end of the world. Having a garbage story just puts it on the same level as 95% of games. Hardly the first time I've sucked through a layer of shit to get to the chewy gameplay center. And at least it's a relatively lighthearted and goofy garbage story, which is infinitely easier to stomach than a garbage story that wants to be taken seriously.
No, the real problem is the sheer volume of garbage. The game opens with a couple of relatively simple tutorial fights, as one might expect. It then proceeds to lock you into a small town and make you trudge back and forth talking to boring NPCs about boring shit. You can leave the town and go find a fight, but you'll be horribly under-leveled which is fatal on harder difficulties. (And no, it doesn't let you turn the difficulty down, grind some XP in baby mode and then crank it back up.) So the only way to proceed is yawn your way through the dialogue. Which you'd need to do to advance the quests anyway. This takes hours. Fucking hours. Especially on your first run when you don't know where everything is. If I hadn't played my friend's saves beforehand, thus knowing there was a light at the end of the boring, talky tunnel, I would have given up at this point and wandered off in search of something more stimulating, like reading a dictionary.
Oh, and for some bizarre reason they went to the expense of voicing everything. Now, don't get me wrong, I'm all for voice acting in games, but this game uses an old school dialogue system, much like the old infinity engine games. So the dialogue text is always right there in front of you and it's not like subtitles where you can turn them off. And since anyone can read faster than anyone can deliver lines, you'll just end up reading ahead and skipping the voiceover. Especially since, as we've discussed, the dialogue content is shit. Plus the actual voice acting is mediocre at best
They also went to the trouble of recording delightful ambient dialogue. Which will promptly driving you fucking insane if you make the mistake of standing still around any friendly NPC. You thought Bethesda NPCs repeated themselves a lot? Let me tell you, they ain't got a thing on these fuckers who will mercilessly churn out their two lines every ten seconds or so.
Then there's the interface. Specifically the inventory interface. For no good reason all your characters have separate inventories, which is fucking unforgivable in a world where Dragon Age showed us how fucking pointless that was. I realize it makes sense for co-op, so your jerk friend can't slurp down all your potions, but there's no reason for it to exist in the single player. It just adds the tedious task of divvying up supplies to the already tedious exercise of comparing gear stats and swapping out 12 armour boots for 14 armour boots.
The end result is a bit bizarre. It's as if the developers made a fairly neat turn-based combat system, tested and refined it, then decided that actually, what players really want is to spend two thirds of their time wading through a river of shitty dialogue and shuffling items between inventories.
Now before I say anything else, let me be clear on one thing: the combat in this game is pretty cool. It's complex and challenging enough (so long as you jack up the difficulty) that you have to think about what you're doing. The whole elemental thing is pretty fun to play with, even if it's not as complex as it first appears. Plus there's a delightful element of chaos and unpredictability in the way that the various systems interact.
I made one of my characters a pyromancer-tank hybrid. Her roles was to put spikes on her shield, charge into the middle of the enemy mob, taunt aggro, set the ground around her on fire, set herself on fire, then sit there reflecting damage, igniting anyone who touched her and occasionally exploding. It was kind of glorious.
It also has amazingly solid and well implemented co-op. If you've ever wanted to play a turn-based isometric RPG stat-em-up with a friend of similar tastes then this is for you.
Oh, and it looks fairly pretty, if rather generic.
Those are the diamonds, see? Now brace yourselves, because here comes the shit.
First off, the narrative is shit.
The magical world of Every Fantasy Setting Ever is under threat by a mysterious cult who want to bring about the return of an Ancient Evil. Luckily you're The Special and, wouldn't you know it, only you can save the day by gathering the magic star stones of destiny and Jesus fucking Christ go crawl back to your DnD campaign you boring fucking hacks.
Now, that's not the end of the world. Having a garbage story just puts it on the same level as 95% of games. Hardly the first time I've sucked through a layer of shit to get to the chewy gameplay center. And at least it's a relatively lighthearted and goofy garbage story, which is infinitely easier to stomach than a garbage story that wants to be taken seriously.
No, the real problem is the sheer volume of garbage. The game opens with a couple of relatively simple tutorial fights, as one might expect. It then proceeds to lock you into a small town and make you trudge back and forth talking to boring NPCs about boring shit. You can leave the town and go find a fight, but you'll be horribly under-leveled which is fatal on harder difficulties. (And no, it doesn't let you turn the difficulty down, grind some XP in baby mode and then crank it back up.) So the only way to proceed is yawn your way through the dialogue. Which you'd need to do to advance the quests anyway. This takes hours. Fucking hours. Especially on your first run when you don't know where everything is. If I hadn't played my friend's saves beforehand, thus knowing there was a light at the end of the boring, talky tunnel, I would have given up at this point and wandered off in search of something more stimulating, like reading a dictionary.
Oh, and for some bizarre reason they went to the expense of voicing everything. Now, don't get me wrong, I'm all for voice acting in games, but this game uses an old school dialogue system, much like the old infinity engine games. So the dialogue text is always right there in front of you and it's not like subtitles where you can turn them off. And since anyone can read faster than anyone can deliver lines, you'll just end up reading ahead and skipping the voiceover. Especially since, as we've discussed, the dialogue content is shit. Plus the actual voice acting is mediocre at best
They also went to the trouble of recording delightful ambient dialogue. Which will promptly driving you fucking insane if you make the mistake of standing still around any friendly NPC. You thought Bethesda NPCs repeated themselves a lot? Let me tell you, they ain't got a thing on these fuckers who will mercilessly churn out their two lines every ten seconds or so.
Then there's the interface. Specifically the inventory interface. For no good reason all your characters have separate inventories, which is fucking unforgivable in a world where Dragon Age showed us how fucking pointless that was. I realize it makes sense for co-op, so your jerk friend can't slurp down all your potions, but there's no reason for it to exist in the single player. It just adds the tedious task of divvying up supplies to the already tedious exercise of comparing gear stats and swapping out 12 armour boots for 14 armour boots.
The end result is a bit bizarre. It's as if the developers made a fairly neat turn-based combat system, tested and refined it, then decided that actually, what players really want is to spend two thirds of their time wading through a river of shitty dialogue and shuffling items between inventories.
