Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Majestic7]

Necromantic revival.

This game is now out and on Steam. I bought it and... I don't usually mind challenging games, but damn this is hard in the worst possible way. Basically, there is constant attrition that will eventually drive you against the wall in a way that you are unable to progress anymore. Personally I don't find anything more frustrating than a game that lures you to waste hours before letting you know it has become unwinnable. I have a feeling this is a case of mistaken definition of old skool among the developers, thinking old skool means bashing the player on the head and forcing him to play in a way the designers intended.

Anyway, basically in the game you are driving around on a giant truck in a hostile wasteland. There are combat encounters where you shoot and kill mutants, cyborgs and raiders in a turn-based combat mode. Your guys are really fragile and when they die, they die. The combat is actually chess hidden as turn-based tactical combat, since most characters have very arbitrary limitations on their actions, like on the range of their possible attacks.

I want to love this game, but the basic mechanics regarding the combat and the way it wears down the player rub me the wrong way.

[Akura]

In the animated screenshot in the first post, is that guy who is dual-wielding pistols killing another guy by kicking him really hard in the balls? While the ball-kicked guy's buddies are, in order: chilling out, doing some weird salute thing, or what appears to be stroking himself with his left hand?

[Majestic7]

Yeah, the game has a lot of balls-kicking in it.

The combat is turn-based, but you get only two actions per turn. That means two guys can do one thing or one guy can do two things. Usually some of your guys end up just standing the whole combat doing nothing. Only kills get you xp, which mean they never progress either.

AI gets the same two actions BUT in addition they have "Blitz counter". It generally just fills and when it is full they get a "Blitz", meaning they get several turns in a row. This, I think, is very descriptive of the game. I don't mind hard games, but I do mind unfair ones. It is like they played FTL, thought "pfft filthy casuals" and tried to make a version that is just harder and thus better at every level.

The player has Dozer weapons (like you can fire a nuke) as a special ace up their sleeve, but these all cost power cells that are rare. The same power cells are used to upgrade the Dozer and to solve encounters on the map, so they are the one resource the player never has enough of.

[blazing glory]

This game is now out and on Steam. I bought it and... I don't usually mind challenging games, but damn this is hard in the worst possible way.

I always feel as if I'm playing a different game when someone talks about how hard it is, I don't want to be 'that guy' who talks about how great he is at the game and how everyone else is terrible but...I'm not really seeing the difficulty, at least not in the magnitudes mentioned.

Either I'm somehow breaking the game and something is going wrong, or just about everyone uses more then 4 units per battle and it really affects them somehow.

I really don't know, I went all the way to Aztec City when I got my bearings after a couple runs and only started having trouble when I was going through the bosses in Double Down. (Which isn't really like New Game+, for the record.)

doing some weird salute thing, or what appears to be stroking himself with his left hand?

He's just waving his gun around in his idle animation, nothing to be really worried about.

AI gets the same two actions BUT in addition they have "Blitz counter". It generally just fills

Which, to clarify, activates when three turns has gone by without anyone dying.

when it is full they get a "Blitz", meaning they get several turns in a row.

While I'm not the best expert on this subject, since I never really let them get it, but I'm pretty sure it doesn't go like that, it's 3 actions instead of 2 for one turn and it activates some special faction(?) ability or such like a damage halving shield.

The player has Dozer weapons (like you can fire a nuke) as a special ace up their sleeve, but these all cost power cells that are rare. The same power cells are used to upgrade the Dozer and to solve encounters on the map, so they are the one resource the player never has enough of.

Though once you reach the level 5 upgrade cap for all the things, you can hoard them all for Dozer Weapons, pretty good for Double Down.

I guess I really am coming off as 'that guy' but I'd say FTL is harder then this.

[Majestic7]

I guess I really am coming off as 'that guy' but I'd say FTL is harder then this.

Weird, since I think FTL is easier or at least more enjoyable, I've certainly won it several times. I tried playing Bedlam on easy and kept losing so many soldiers I quit several times before progressing halfway through the map.

I think in my case it is how arbitrary the difficulty feels. The game doesn't give you enough information; in general it feels like a game out of 1980s in a bad way. It just expects you to just know things, like when your dude can't attack an enemy next to him, the game doesn't tell you why, you are just left wondering.

Additionally the game mechanics and the game fluff don't really meet. The game content comes across as something where you need to optimize everything, like you were playing a certain type of board game. At the same time the game tries to sell itself as a gritty, atmospheric type of thing, not a number crunching experience.

It is hard to say what exactly rubs me so wrong about it, but I'm considering Steam Refund for the first time. Hey, I like Dwarf Fortress where Losing Is Fun. Something in Bedlam just lacks that Fun. 

[blazing glory]

I guess I really am coming off as 'that guy' but I'd say FTL is harder then this.

I tried playing Bedlam on easy and kept losing so many soldiers I quit several times before progressing halfway through the map.

Oh yeah, a whole bunch of 'em are going to die at the start, the last quarter become Veterans and generally hang on, with you replacing the ones that die with whatever you can find along the journey.

Apparently easy mode just makes the difficulty level rise slower so it doesn't really do much in the grand scheme of things.

Anyways, in 61 hours I have only won FTL once on easy, so I dunno.

I wasn't even born in the 80s so I wouldn't have anything to say about that, as for who can attack guys next to him, that'd be trenchers and front liners, the other guys have to get some distance first, and the indicators that show up when your moving show the range.

The game content comes across as something where you need to optimize everything, like you were playing a certain type of board game.

It actually was a board game, a privately made one at any rate, so that'd probably make a degree of sense, I don't really have an opinion on that point.

[a1s]

The game content comes across as a board game. But it tries to sell itself as an atmospheric type of thing.

Well there you go. You're not playing the game you were expecting. You either need a change of perspective (double down on board-gaminess) or a refund (if you'd really rather be playing a visual novel, and this is just too far from your wheelhouse)

[Cthulhu]

I feel like it could be pretty easy once you're well-versed in it.  The way the turns work is really jarring compared to most games and will take a while to get accustomed to.

Gave it some more time, a little better about the combat but it still feels like the very low health scores and the way the turn system works makes it almost impossible to keep anyone alive, even veterans.

There's very little you can do to actually keep enemies away from your guys aside from killing them faster than they can kill you.

[GrizzlyAdamz]

Hm, couple runs in, looks like you can have good runs & bad runs. But going out for the first time & learning the ropes will always be a bad one- they don't explain the combat until they hit you over the head with it.
Seems like it'll continue doing that too, with new enemy types & their unknown capabilities.
That's kind of a pain.


Anyway, is inviting this alchemist on-board like, a really bad idea or something?
He sure is trying to charm..

[Majestic7]

Picking up the alchemist can cause a nasty event in your truck, causing mutants to spawn inside.

The game just received a major update, including different difficulty levels. Haven't played it since the launch, though. In hindsight, my major beef with the game was that it has no real tactical options. There is only one optimal way to handle combat in each situation. Unless you see what the game wants you to do, you die.

[GrizzlyAdamz]

Well, having taken him up on his offer because why not, I've found the alchemist is a game-changer.

His ability to double resource nodes lets you just snowball equalizers into more & more powercells.
If a mutant attack is the only downside, I'd say he's well worth it.


Hm, did it still feel that way when you could use equalizers?
They seemed to fix some of that chess-feel for me.