Impire released! Anyone played it yet?

[EmperorZoltan]

Hey all,

Just noticed on the steam store front page that Impire just launched. I'm a huge fan of the classic Bullfrog game Dungeon Keeper, which is apparently the primary influence for this game. I'm keen to check it out but haven't seen any reviews up on the net yet. Either the embargo hasn't lifted or the developers didn't provide press review copies.

The thing stopping me from just buying it outright and trying it for myself is I've been burned by this exact situation before; I forked out premium launch price $$$ for DUNGEONS, which was bloody rubbish. I'm also a little squirrely about my cash at the moment, so I'd prefer to avoid crappy or average games.

So my question to you, escapists, is have you played it yet? If so, how is it?

 

[Orange12345]

I am also interested in this game, as I was also burned on dungeons

 

[Lopende Paddo]

As soon as my cash comes in this month I'll own that game....

 

[jim1398]

I've played it for a few hours and it's...alright. Don't expect a straight Dungeon Keeper clone though. It's closer to DK than Dungeons was, but it's still not the same. There isn't anywhere near as much dungeon management (it's mainly about your units), so if that's what you are looking for then you'll want to look elsewhere.

You can tell it's a budget title though and it really needs a couple of patches to tighten up the mechanics and get rid of a few bugs. I'd say give it a few month, see if they patch it. It's got a lot of promise and I am having fun with it, but I can't really recommend it just yet.

 

[EmperorZoltan]

Well I went ahead and bought the game without any review, Still haven't found anything beyond a 1 paragraph statement on rotten tomatoes....

So I went ahead and wrote a review myself!

Check it out at http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/326.401226-Impire-review-An-monotonous-delve-into-well-trodden-dungeon-sim-grounds


Spoilers: Impire is not very good.....

 

[psyco]

Have it, playing it, enjoying but not loving it

Pros:
- The looks and feel of the dungeon is great, it 'feels right'
- Dark Humor pretty much like DK
- If you can't get resources down in your dungeon, you can get it via raids on the Overworld

Cons:
- Minions don't eat on their own and can't be picked up (but can be teleported) - you pretty much have to feed them after one or two fights as they get hungry even if they don't do anything
- Squadsize restricted to 4 Minions - you have to teleport several squads from room to room
- Patrol command for your minions is useful but only covers a limited area (which is unfortunately not displayed)
- The AI. Oh, the AI! -.-

Basically, you do build a little in this game but the rest is almost like Overlord where you have Baal run around with your squads and annihilate stuff. Teleporting is supposed to be used generously and the micro-managing of your Minions when it comes to food or training turns the game a bit into a rythm of feed-fight-patrol.
Training only works if you have fought in the first place (and own a training room, obviously) as the minions train on the semi-dead heroes... which I actually like, but instead of the game giving a limited amount of xp per hero it gives a limited time per hero so that you miss your window of opportunity there is very likely and always a bit frustrating.

Jailcells give gold as the heroes die in them, defeating heroes normally gives matierals which is used for building traps and some units and so on and so forth. The resources are well balanced and fun.

The last bit is the Minion AI. Obviously they don't eat on their own and once you get more than three squads ordering them all to eat is tedious at best (since you have to wait with the ordering until the kitchen is free/one squad is done eating) but there are also Boss Fights in this game.
*Spoiler for the first Boss fight!*------------
The first one would be pretty simple. One Boss, Four Tables with stuff/food and you and your squads. Whenever you have whittled down a good chunk of the Boss' life he runs to a random table, stuffs himself and is healed up. The tables also respawn so what do you do? Teleport to a table when the Boss runs and attack the table, right? Right, except sometimes Minions insist on fighting the Boss instead once they are teleported - no matter how often you click on the table. You can easily reset the fight by teleporting everyone out of the room (do that - heal up, eat again a.s.o.) but it took me like four tries until this worked properly by chance and that worries me.
*Spoiler End!*---------------

Generally have your minions on patrol so they attack every intruder or ladder (basically a possible breach) they come upon and distribute them evenly about your dungeon.


In the end, the game IS enjoyable for me. AI issues can be fixed (and hopefully will be) and my dungeon itch feels somewhat scratched. Just don't expect a fast progression thanks to the whole kitchen dilemma.

 

[psyco]

Multiplayer is in Beta, and I haven't found anything that lets you play a random map against an AI or something.

 

[Jandau]

The core game and mechanics are good, it's just the execution that's very rough around the edges. There's tons of busywork that only serves to piss you off. People have mentioned having to micromanage food and training, but that's nothing. Hunting ladders, now that's annoying. For those who haven't played the game, here's how it works - normally, heroes spawn at the dungeon entrance every 5-10 minutes. However, after the first few waves, ladders start to spawn. At first only 2, but then later up to 4. Heroes can randomly spawn from these ladders instead the dungeon entrance. Once they spawn you have around 15 seconds to destroy them before a wave comes in. This means you need to drop everything you're doing, frantically teleport your units into positions, then MANUALLY order them to attack ladders because fuck you, having minions attack them automatically would be too convenient.

The interface is sluggish. This exacerbates the aforementioned micromanagement problems even further. Precise targeting seems to be needlessly hard. Some aspects of the game feel like they were intended to be more elaborate, but were forgotten or cut (surface raids, for instance, feel like they were intended to be more complex). The disconnection between the hero incursions and actual mission objectives is jarring, with the incursions only serving to distract and get in the way. And you can't just automate it due to the whole ladder thing I mentioned earlier. No, you must drop whatever you're doing and go deal with it.

And yet, underneath the annoyances there's a fun, interesting game. The visual style is good, the gameplay is fun if you can get past the aforementioned problems, the writing and characters are funny.

All in all, it's a Cyanide game. This means that it's a diamond in the rough. Some of their diamonds are rougher than others. Personally, I'm having fun with the game and I'll keep playing it. It's in better shape than Dungeons was, that's for sure.

 

[psyco]

This means you need to drop everything you're doing, frantically teleport your units into positions, then MANUALLY order them to attack ladders because fuck you, having minions attack them automatically would be too convenient.

Just a quick hint, hope it helps and isn't redundant... A squad that is on patrol will attack ladders (whether they are patrolling past them anyway or being teleported to them). And well, obviously you can see ladder positions/icons if you zoom out but I think you already know that.

I agree with you about the other stuff.

 

[Jandau]

This means you need to drop everything you're doing, frantically teleport your units into positions, then MANUALLY order them to attack ladders because fuck you, having minions attack them automatically would be too convenient.

Just a quick hint, hope it helps and isn't redundant... A squad that is on patrol will attack ladders (whether they are patrolling past them anyway or being teleported to them). And well, obviously you can see ladder positions/icons if you zoom out but I think you already know that.

I agree with you about the other stuff.

True, but squad patrol is useless. There's literally nothing to patrol for. The only thing to patrol for are heroes, which come at set intervals in a single group. So at any given time my squads are either raiding, eating, training or questing. Not only that, but if I were to set them to patrol after teleporting them, then I'd have to change it back so they don't run around like idiots.

I understand what they wanted to do with the whole "ladders" thing. They wanted to add a layer of unpredictability to hero spawning. But the fact that ladders CAN be destroyed simply means you might as well blow them up. This ends up eliminating the random element and messing things up further.

I'm only hoping that the Brewery and Monster Den rooms that get unlocked later help here. It states they lure Heroes to them, which might be a nice way to funnel them into a convenient killing field...

 

[EmperorZoltan]

I can tell you right now having unlocked the monster den room that it doens't affect ladder spawns or make a perceptible difference to hero movement.... I've given up on impire, playing wackamole with invading heroes for the upteenth time in a level whilst trying to navigate endless labrinths is a major pain.

 

[Strazdas]

PLayed, not, but saw gameplay from a guy i follow and it looked like its the new Dungeon Keepers, a game i STILL play. its on my list of games i must play. unless somone is going to tell me its something awful.
Gosh, so many good games so little time.

 

[Abomination]

I fear this has turned into a title I will get back to when they polish it some more. It is essentially whack-a-mole with ladders then teleport your entire force on top of the invading heroes.

Repeat.

The story and attitude is really fun, the minions themselves are quite well designed and the squad system would be useful if you could have more than 5 and their AI was better.

If you want more Dungeon Keeper just replay Dungeon Keeper 2... no game has done it better yet.

 

[surg3n]

I was planning on buying it this weekend, not sure I'll bother going by your reactions.

Why ohh why ohh why can't we just have Dungeon Keeper 3! - there's a massive market for it, that games like Game of Dwarves and Dungeon are merely skimming. Someone please tell Molyneux to stop pissing around with pixel selection games and make a game we actually want for once!

Game of Dwarves is ok, not great, a bit repetitive but at least you can spend time making a cool dungeon/mine/dwarf hole.

 

[Pipotchi]

I found it really boring, your minions don't really do much on their own, it's more like a fairly dull RTS that happens to be in a dungeon. Plus faffing about with feeding them and that first boss fight put me right off

 

[SL33TBL1ND]

I've played it for a few hours and it's...alright. Don't expect a straight Dungeon Keeper clone though. It's closer to DK than Dungeons was, but it's still not the same. There isn't anywhere near as much dungeon management (it's mainly about your units), so if that's what you are looking for then you'll want to look elsewhere.

I don't get it. All of these games seem to want to channel people's love of Dungeon Keeper to feed success into their game, but none of them take it far enough. They always get the setting and a couple gameplay elements right, but then decide to make a boring RTS instead.

 

[surg3n]

I don't get it. All of these games seem to want to channel people's love of Dungeon Keeper to feed success into their game, but none of them take it far enough. They always get the setting and a couple gameplay elements right, but then decide to make a boring RTS instead.

Yeah, it's kinda annoying to see a game that looks like DK, you start thinking that it'll be like DK, then it turns out to be a shoddy RTS, tower defense, or a badly done hack and slash RPG. I've been hoping for a decent multiplayer DK style game for years.

Well, finished my game app last month so I'm looking for a new project, I might have a go myself at making a game that adheres more to what we like about DK. Maybe once I get started I'll start a thread and ask for input on it - game design by committee(sp?), the way it should be done!. I have written an RTS before, about 9 years ago and enjoyed it a lot, actually one of the most interesting and fun game types to develop.

 

[psyco]

Impire really was never advertised as DK3, they were quite clear on that.
What IS however supposed to be is...
https://wftogame.com/

(no, seriously)

 

[ron1n]

Yeah War of the Overworld is shaping up nicely. Even got the official Peter Molyneux seal of approval.

The pre-fabricated buildings and lack of minion A.I in Impire was kind of deal breaker for me. Shame too because Aesthetically the game looked pretty good. Especially loved the music.