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Author Topic: Blurb on Games that probably don't deserve their own threads.  (Read 326677 times)

Robsoie

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Re: Blurb on Games that probably don't deserve their own threads.
« Reply #1395 on: October 05, 2021, 03:57:08 am »

Some good old HoMM2/3 tactics work good in Hero's Hour too, like sending some additional heroes (even without much troops) to capture the ressources near the enemy area, giving you a big advantage on the long run (as even when they will recapture the ressources you'll have more). 

The heroes "supply train" works too (make a few heroes that are only there to carry new troops to other heroes, until they reach your main hero) and is always a requirement to not get destroyed by an enemy hero after you lost troops on a location and your castle is too far.

Still not used to the real time battles, as while in the beginning when you don't have much troops, they're rather controllable and tactical, once you start to have large amount of units, things get out of hands quickly and you'll just increase the speed and wait for the result hoping your army AI will do a better job than the enemy one.

I got a crash when my main hero party was hunting an enemy one , clicked to move the party to the enemy and it froze the game until crash. Odd as things had worked correctly until then, but without logs no idea what happened.
« Last Edit: October 05, 2021, 03:58:55 am by Robsoie »
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Kagus

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Re: Blurb on Games that probably don't deserve their own threads.
« Reply #1396 on: October 05, 2021, 01:16:11 pm »

There are also currently a number of bugs and oversights, along with some rather head-scratchingly odd design decisions.

Stuff like the "on death, your units have a chance to cast a destructive spell" skill. What it doesn't tell you is that those destructive spells are generally large AoE rain effects with 100% friendly fire. Which, yes, will indeed set off a chain reaction that brings down the heavens upon the battlefield... But it'll also do a fantastic job of killing your own troops before the enemy even gets to them.

Also those spells keep going for a while, including after the battle is over. This can result in losing troops after you've already won if you're not fast enough at clicking "end battle".


Oh yeah, there's also a building that can randomly spawn on the map which lets you sacrifice units in order to turn them into increases to the spellpower and mana stats for a hero. There's also no cap on how much you can increase those stats.

And this is how you end up with a hero with +2400% spellpower who can straight up one-shot an entire endgame army with a single spell, and who has enough magical reserves to cast that spell 20 times in a battle.

Frumple

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Re: Blurb on Games that probably don't deserve their own threads.
« Reply #1397 on: October 05, 2021, 01:33:43 pm »

It was fun watching someone beat the (then, this was prior to the latest patches with bigger, badder) highest difficulty with one hero and no construction. Basically they went with the axolotl faction and beelined conflux, more or less drowned the map in effectively free elementals.

Balance is indeed still somewhat wonky :P
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Iceblaster

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Re: Blurb on Games that probably don't deserve their own threads.
« Reply #1398 on: October 05, 2021, 01:59:02 pm »

Oh yeah, there's also a building that can randomly spawn on the map which lets you sacrifice units in order to turn them into increases to the spellpower and mana stats for a hero. There's also no cap on how much you can increase those stats.

And this is how you end up with a hero with +2400% spellpower who can straight up one-shot an entire endgame army with a single spell, and who has enough magical reserves to cast that spell 20 times in a battle.

Gonna be honest I love overpowered stuff like that entirely bc of how much effort it takes to get there, something about gimping yourself in order to build up to something outstandingly OP is fun.

Kagus

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Re: Blurb on Games that probably don't deserve their own threads.
« Reply #1399 on: October 05, 2021, 03:10:57 pm »

Yeeeaaaaah, thing is the unit to power conversion is occasionally a little bit wonky, and doesn't necessarily take into consideration that Hero X can summon red dragons for free, which can then be converted into a ridiculous number of stat points because they have hilariously massive power ratings.

Along with the other undead dragons that showed up in the party for free.


But yeah, the game does seem to match the design philosophy of "Overpowered vs. Overpowered"

Robsoie

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Re: Blurb on Games that probably don't deserve their own threads.
« Reply #1400 on: October 06, 2021, 09:41:52 am »

After playing a bit more this nice Hero's Hour, i find the game far too unstable if i play for a while.
Googling around it looks like the game has monstrous memory leaks (probably explaining why it never crashed on a specific action, but always seemed to crash for me if i play for a long time), hopefully the dev will be able to fix that as it crashes too much for my taste.

I found the skirmish mode not as fun as i thought (skirmish mode is about fighting a specific army, you're given X amount of gold to build your army to beat a level)

Now for the good, the demo is very packed with content, so you can spend a lot of time on it. And out of the real time messy battles it's very faithfull to the Heroes of Might and Magic gameplay.
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Kagus

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Re: Blurb on Games that probably don't deserve their own threads.
« Reply #1401 on: October 06, 2021, 02:06:21 pm »

Yeah, funny note about the demo... While you can't directly choose one of the other "locked" civilizations, they can still be randomly selected for neutral and enemy towns. And if you take one over, well, now you've got their whole tech tree available to play with.

Il Palazzo

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Re: Blurb on Games that probably don't deserve their own threads.
« Reply #1402 on: October 08, 2021, 12:25:45 am »

Here's something you guys and gals might find interesting:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/909660/Vagrus__The_Riven_Realms/

Best to describe it, I think, is Sunless Sea/Skies, but turn-based.

There's a very rich world to explore, with tons of quality text. Definitely a reader's game. The writing is not quite at the level of the Sunless series, but is also less flowery and more down to earth. The post-apocalyptic fantasy Rome setting may at times feel forced. The whole thing reads like an >extremely< competent amateur RPG campaign.

The day-to-day loop involves mostly ferrying cargo between settlements and following up on pieces of information to open up story/opportunity/companion bits.
Escorts, raiding, and bounty hunting are an option, but combat is brutal - losses are easy to incur and relatively costly to replace. The game lets you start with a more combat-oriented caravan, but so far I can't see making any profit this way until one has earned a bit of coin other ways.

The map looks lovely and is a joy to explore. Movement is with action points between fixed nodes, which works much better than I anticipated. Caravan management takes some getting used to, but once you get the hang of it, it feels right.

In addition to the free-form play there's also a more on-rails story campaign.
And there's a short demo that nonetheless gives a very good overview of how the various game systems work. Check it out first.
It's a recent release, so there are bugs to squash and kinks to iron out.
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AlStar

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Re: Blurb on Games that probably don't deserve their own threads.
« Reply #1403 on: October 08, 2021, 10:14:39 am »

Here's something you guys and gals might find interesting:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/909660/Vagrus__The_Riven_Realms/
Reading through the reviews, a point that I came across several times is that profitability is balanced on a knife's edge, and that any disruption to that (including story missions that require you to quickly change your destination) can cause you to spiral into insolvency.

Another was that combat isn't very rewarding, since most of the rewards you win are cargo-based, but those cargos probably don't stack with what you're carrying and you won't have anywhere to put them (since you need to constantly have a full cargo or you'll be losing money in travel), forcing you to ditch the goods.

Are these problems that you've run across?

Il Palazzo

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Re: Blurb on Games that probably don't deserve their own threads.
« Reply #1404 on: October 08, 2021, 11:38:57 am »

Are these problems that you've run across?
I've been avoiding combat like the plague after some initial poking around, so I can't say too much about it (but sometimes it finds you and you just have to bite the bullet). The way it works, far as I can tell, is that you really shouldn't just go and pick random fights hoping for kewl lootz. The generic loot from some raiders or undead is going to be meh, and is unlikely to offset the cost in supplies and rehiring of lost crew. Taking a well-paid mission, or following on some story bits should nett better results. Rare non-cargo curios, like jewellery etc., don't take up space and can bring some good coin.
If you know what you're doing, and why you're doing it - it should work. But I don't think you'll ever be overpowered enough just go looking for trouble.

As for the general economy balance - it's tight, but not unfairly so. I'm on my first run, other than early tutorialising, and I'm seeing a steady influx of cash doing mostly just trading/cargo missions.
It's much like Sunless Sea/Skies, down to literally the same type of complaints you hear. If you're familiar with those games, the way to make money is by combining as many ways to make profit on a given route as you can.
Take any ferrying missions, buy some stock you know is in demand along the way, maybe consider taking passengers if they're going in the same direction. As long as you take care to exploit all available opportunities, you should be fine. What bleeds money is empty runs, buying random cargo and hoping it'll sell, and overhiring (caravans can be easily downsized and later upsized again, at a rather modest loss).

Unlike the Sunless games, there's a sensible save system, so you never lose everything to a single bad decision and can experiment with what works or doesn't, more easily.
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Kagus

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Re: Blurb on Games that probably don't deserve their own threads.
« Reply #1405 on: October 08, 2021, 12:34:59 pm »

I think I made my money in Sunless Sea by grinding salt blocks up until I could afford the freighter-y ship, packing the mod that prevents your engine from exploding on top, and then choo-chooing at maximum overspeed back and forth between the westernmost and easternmost parts of the map with something that was apparently profitable.

Sure, I made less money than if I wasn't constantly going full afterburner mode, but doing that made me feel better as a person. So I did it.

scriver

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Re: Blurb on Games that probably don't deserve their own threads.
« Reply #1406 on: October 08, 2021, 01:03:17 pm »

So I'm playing Phoenix Point. I've played it for less than five minutes now. And I've already lost my mind.

My drar fellows, I can't describe to you how annoying this is. In this game. When you zoom in. You zoom out. When you zoom out? You zoom in. Yes. They tied zoom out to scroll up and zoom in to scroll down.

I have no idea how they could possibly manage to get the scroll directions so wrong in the first place. But then it gets worse. Yes, worse. Why? It's simple. Because not only did they make it completely backwards to begin with. But. They won't let you change it.

Complete and utter madness. I'm reminded of the old of the old song by Nick Cave, https://youtu.be/uny3pYb1fsI, and it's famous lyrics: "The ladders of life we scroll merrily // move mysteriously around // so when you think you're scrolling up, man // in fact you're scrolling down"

Also, when I originally wrote this on my computer while tabbed out my computer froze :(


I think I made my money in Sunless Sea by grinding salt blocks up until I could afford the freighter-y ship, packing the mod that prevents your engine from exploding on top, and then choo-chooing at maximum overspeed back and forth between the westernmost and easternmost parts of the map with something that was apparently profitable.

Sure, I made less money than if I wasn't constantly going full afterburner mode, but doing that made me feel better as a person. So I did it.

I loved the concept of Sunless Sea, but I have up on ever getting any enjoyment from it because of how it expected you to have huge caches of cash while seemingly having no way that I could understand to actually make a profit. Sadface.fileformat
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scriver

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Re: Blurb on Games that probably don't deserve their own threads.
« Reply #1407 on: October 08, 2021, 04:29:54 pm »

Update: WHEN YOU ENTER FREE AIM MODE SCROLLING UP ZOOMS IN AND SCROLLING DOWN ZOOMS OUT WHO EVEN MADE THIS GAME
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scriver

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Re: Blurb on Games that probably don't deserve their own threads.
« Reply #1408 on: October 08, 2021, 07:32:11 pm »

By the second area I realised that what I originally thought was zooming was z-level scrolling (and there were other zoom buttons) but in my defence, the first area did not have much in the way of elevation.

I have since developed a whole other bunch of less humorous issues with the game, though. Probably not picking it up again.
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Aoi

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Re: Blurb on Games that probably don't deserve their own threads.
« Reply #1409 on: October 09, 2021, 10:17:51 pm »

The Magister basically combines a turn-based tactical and a deckbuilder, then shoves it into a game of Clue... while also managing to be crushingly boring.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)
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