So I played this for a couple of hours, and I'd say it has potential.
I played through the first few missions, which were pretty bog standard (go kill that, bring back this etc.). They were also very tutorial-ish, letting you get familiar with the combat system and character customisation. The combat flows well, but is not all that interesting, at least initially. However, I suspect that this is because the early enemies have no abilities what so ever, only basic attack-most-dangerous-dude-until-killed AI.
The character advancement system is where I see most of the potential for the game; every character (you get three, replaceable as the game progresses, in a party) has two skills, determined by his class, and every skill gets five (IIRC) "booster" slots where you can place various upgrades. In the short time I played, I found only two different boosters, healing and damage, but I imagine there are several more to be found later. How it works is that the boosters augment the existing skill, so for example, one of your staring guys is a "regulator" (ranged crowd-control guy with a rifle) who has two skills, an area-effect slow and a single-target stun. So if you slot into one healing booster into your area-slow it will heal all friendlies inside. Likewise, if you slot into a damage booster, it will start damaging any enemies if the area.
Each character also has several implant slots, which are used for stat boosts, which means that you don't actually gain any stats upon level up, only access to more booster and implant slots. There is also a weapon and gadget slot for each character. Weapon slot is self-explanatory, and the gadget slot contains some useful little thing, for example a grenade or a long-cooldown gun (I think there are non-offensive gadgets as well, but I didn't find any). All of this, combined with the crafting system (which means you can craft any of these items) makes me think there is some solid character-building potential here.
The world itself is pretty interesting, at least when reading the lore on their forums. I didn't see much of it explained in game yet, but I was only in the starter town and did a couple of quests. As a Swede, it's extra fun to understand the meaning behind all the quirky names and references. However, not all references are Swedish-people-only, so you crazy foreigners should find some fun references as well.
Finally, the game itself is really beautiful, especially the towns and wilderness. The art style is a really nice blend of Fallout, Borderlands and pine forest, which I personally really like.
I'm looking forward to playing the release version, and seeing more of their world.
Author
Topic: Krater - A post-apocalyptic dungeon crawler. "I HATE BEARS." (Read 11171 times)