All yours, once we link on Steam.
Accepted, thank you!
Sent, enjoy!
Looks great so far though the cauldron’s “higher cost on future uses” mechanic has me paralyzed and unwilling to use it the first time. Is the penalty not that bad or does it go up pretty quickly?
Eh. It’s money. Money is 100% restricted (I think?) by your tolerance to grind. I have been descending directly each time, but I think you can do stuff over and grind if you want to, anyway.
So I used a coupon generously given to me (thanks @Mysterio!) to grab this for around $7 on Friday. I figured I would play for an hour Friday night and see what it was all about, then get back to No Man’s Sky and Bard’s Tale IV, both my current obsessions.
One whole weekend later I spent all my available game time, nearly 5 hours total, playing Book of Demons! It starts out so simple, with very easy to understand mechanics and UI, an interesting little story with a good bit of humor, and that charming paper graphics style. Sure the constant movement on rails thing is a little off-putting at first, but you quickly adapt to it, and you can use SHIFT to hold your character in one place if need be, though I find myself kiting creatures (moving backwards) more often than not.
Then, one hour later, you realize you’ve discovered a couple of new layers to the game while playing, and you’re strategizing how to best use the new cards you’ve found so far and how to distribute the health vs. mana from leveling up, and agonizing over buying the cauldron now or waiting. Two hours after that you’re wondering about upgrading some of those cards using the new runes you’ve discovered, and fusing the common runes into uncommon ones, and by now you’ve unlocked multiple card slots, and bought your first Gold cauldron, and discovered new monster types with new abilities. All of which requires more strategy and thought on your part.
And then you meet…The Cook.
At it’s core this game is a basic rogue-like ARPG, delving ever deeper into dungeons fighting monsters for ever better loot and returning to town in between bouts. But it is also one of the most tightly designed, multi-layered and just plain attractive games I’ve played in a long time. There is so much more here than just click and loot. It’s quietly brilliant in that way that makes you lose track of time while you play.
I started playing the demo tonight to see if I want to use my coupon or not. This makes a decent first impression for someone not usually that attracted to Diablo style games. It’s funny because the one guy in town (the sage I think) sounds like the old guy in Diablo. This guy is much less annoying so far.
I think the nice thing so far is how it is laid out so simply. There are multiple enemies and you can get backed into a corner or surrounded, but the the screen is readable. One thing I hate about Diablo is how the screen just becomes a big mess of monsters and projectiles. I’m not sure how far the demo goes, but I’ll play it to the end and then decide if i want to play more of this game.
Buy it, its fun! Also what class are you playing?
I just accepted the default warrior guy at normal difficulty.
I stopped right after hitting level 5 as a warrior because other stuff came up. But looking forward to jumping back in as the mage next, then thief. Will also use the cauldron for the first time, and damn the increased costs later!
I thought about getting this, but I’m seeing a number of reviews that say it’s actually fairly shallow and gets repetitive very quickly, particularly from a combat sense.
Thoughts on that?
It’s an ARPG. All ARPGs have fairly a simple core game loop. I imagine people that complain that it’s repetitive are either playing on too low a difficulty setting or aren’t interested in fooling around with the cards and getting upgrades in the village.
In short: they have no idea of what fun is. :-P
I mean, with the coupon it’s only $6+ something. The presentation and whatever systems are still in the depths awaiting to be unearthed are well worth the cost to me. I can see it getting repetitive at some point but the journey seems like it’ll be an enjoyable one at least.
Glad you’re loving it!
While in EA, the devs added two additional modes. One is the Roguelike mode that’s fairly difficult. You’re allowed to die, but each successive death carries with it an additional resurrection cost, so gold is much more valuable than in the default mode.
Also, card drops are completely random. In the other two modes, cards drops are random, but restricted based on certain factors. @Konstantyka can provide more specific details. :-)
Since I played a lot of the default mode during EA, I jumped directly into Roguelike mode on release and am having a blast!
I’m not saying it’s overpriced. It’s more an opportunity cost of time. So many things to play - I’m interested in it, but don’t want to sink a few hours into it if it just ends up being repetitive fairly quickly.
I’m trying to hone my game purchases down to things that are likely to be long lasting, as I have a ton of stuff to play already, so anything that’s mediocre is kind of pointless to buy.
Which really says, I should probably not even be typing this, and should just be playing something instead. :)
Exactly, start playing until you burn out, then move on! I do that way too often but at least I get to keep experiencing new games, artwork, systems, etc :D
There’s a demo, I’d make use of it. Playing a couple of hours in the demo was enough to convince me it wasn’t my particular cup of tea, but clearly lots of other folks here really like it. As with anything, YMMV.
I don’t see how it’s any more repetitive than any other arpg I’ve ever played. These games are repetitive by nature, so I’m not sure what that means.
I’ve only played a little bit, but my feeling is that there’s a lot more too for meaningful build customization here than in diablo 3. For instance, I’m playing the Rogue currently. I have a card that splits on impact to make two more arrows. The basic version creates normal arrows. If you upgrade it, now it creates arrows that are the same type as the original. That now makes equipped arrows
stronger, and perhaps creating other opportunities down the line.
Of course, I don’t have to use that card at all, but for the early going, it took a fair amount of resources for the upgrade, so abandoning it now would probably make me underpowered.
Hoping the will be lots of other cool modifiers/passives like this. I did find one called quiver that increases arrow speed and gives a chance for an explosion on impact, but the explosion didn’t seem noticeable.
So it has these timed/twitch/arcade elements I hate: clicking on the health orb when poisoned at the right time, and just now I encountered a shielded monster where to beat it I had to click on it’s little moving shield. I’m willing to tolerate a certain amount of twitch in arpgs but the less the better, and this was just beyond my border of acceptable.
For me, that just jarred me straight out of the old-school Diablo experience. I uninstalled.
I’m sad as it was seeming so excellent. But to me that sort of BS is like finding something nasty in your soup.
The shield doesn’t move any more than the creatures do. That one doesn’t bother me. I don’t even mind the interrupt spell mechanic. The one I really find annoying is the star-catching when you get stunned. But I’m enjoying this way too much to stop because of it.