What, even Krumit has juicy difficulty? I enjoyed it an as an hors d’oeuvre. Now I hear I need to try it as the main course. This is not good for the backlog.
Deck of Ashes is also on sale. I haven’t seen it mentioned here. Combine that with the middling temperature I sense from the Steam reviews says this is where a chop can be made to allow Meteorfall: Krumit’s Tale a space to resurge (…some undisclosed number of months or years in the future, of course).
I bought and played it, perhaps within early access. Despite being a deck-building roguelike lover, Deck of Ashes did not click for me. My recall is that there is a relatively larger proportion of time spent within each run with few options / decisions available per turn and that combats persist far longer than in many comparable games, not in a tactically challenging, but more of a grindy way.
However, this is dated recall, and I would love to learn that this became a strong game from anyone with recent experience.
Oooh, new arrival! Just launched with 20% discount
The first roguelike in which you play as the devil, which means you can change some of the game’s rules to your advantage! Run after run, manage your team of famous evil geniuses as they encounter unforeseen events and turn-based combat. Unlock new skills, create powerful synergies and use your powers to turn the situation in your favour at critical moments. Only by collecting ancient artefacts can you finally take your revenge on the Demon Hunters.
Wait now, were we not playing as the Devil or some such in Monster Train? Huh, anyhoo, this one did not go through early access, so no reviews just yet. So we need someone to take the leap and . . . yup, sure, I will! I will report back later!
I played the demo during the Steam Next Fest and loved it. But I’m an easy sell when it comes to this type of game (for example, I enjoy Deck of Ashes, but it’s not at the same level of play and presentation levels as, say, Monster Train). Off to buy this for $15.99 at GMG (deal expires in 3 hours and 21 minutes as of this posting)!
It does, yeah. Meteorfall: Krummits Tale has New Game +1 +2 etc challenge levels that apply some negative to your run. These are unlocked per character rather than globally. I have only gotten to +2 on any character, and even that can be pretty dang tough since the negatives are cumulative. Level =1 reduces HP by 2, which is a big deal since many mobs can kill the weaker characters in one or two turns of combat already.
Remind me of Star Renegades which I love. Star Renegades is one of the best roguelite, tactical, turn based games ever imo.
I might grab it to pull me out of monster train.
Meteorfall: Krummits Tale, I always confuses that with Cardpocalypse. M:KT will probably be the next game I purchase once it’s on a decent discount.
I don’t know if it belongs here but 40% off currently.
I take a lot longer in my tactics than designers estimate. Six hours for a second win (still at Hard) in Trials of Fire, and still using an elementalist in the party. I still need a third win to even unlock the final character. I don’t know that any other character can displace the spot in the marching order filled by that elementalist.
I have down-graded “never engage a labelled hard battle” to a guideline. Facing new beasts of fell destruction is too interesting to pass up, and sometimes a group of bandits needs extermination for my story sensibilities.
Two other notes. (1) Powers = good. I flipped my stance here. I really hated powers at the start. I think that came from not positioning as well, so powers wouldn’t get value. I hit the Mighty achievement (deal 20 damage) through a power stack. It is tricky to fund applying powers, but they magnify later actions greatly. (2) Don’t rush to the objective. I can stretch the morale gauge to allow more exploration, loot, and levels. With these lessons learned, the next attempt will be in the Cataclysm stages.
Apparently after that deal expired, they have a new one for $14.99? I went ahead and picked Rogue Lords up because I believe in an unbounded universe of space and time, where all games will be played.
I wanted something that wasn’t Baba Is You (great puzzle game but hard) for my phone, and @Lykurgos convinced me to get over my distaste for the art style and pick up Krumit’s Tale. I’ve made three runs totaling about an hour of play and I like it, although it seems to me quite a bit more basic in its possible interactions so far than Slay. The enemies all follow a set pattern of actions, so there’s no surprise and no chance of a lucky break, which has led to a couple of frustrating situations where I know I’m just going to eat some blitz damage every encounter because I have no way (yet) of countering that and so no way of winning the dungeon, but I have to play it out anyway.
Rogue Lords is… fine. At best.
Poor balancing, several design decisions that don’t add to the game and sometimes even detract from it.
The main example is the combat. With three characters (3+ skills each at the start) but only 5 energy and most skills costing 2 energy. This means most turns you use two skills. Your characters completely heal after each combat, so taking damage is a weird guessing game. Will you win before your actual health pool gets damaged? Just ignoring the enemy actions and going for pure nuking as fast as possible is the best strategy in the vast majority of combats.
In the last half/third of a run you likely have collected some more abilities, relics and upgrades and have more options, but the first 2/3s are kind of a slow and uninteractive slog this way.
The final boss fights are the exact opposite of that then. They are such huge HP sponges that damage mitigation becomes your main concern because it will take ages to bring them down.
The game suffers from a poor information system. The enemy intent predictions are not entirely accurate (don’t take all buffs into account for instance, or get modified after you click end turn by something) and there are several damage abilities that have no prediction at all (“this enemy is doing something unexpected”). Tooltips on buffs and abilities are sometimes vague and occasionally lacking in critical information.
The event system has an elaborate attribute system, mini events and gambling involved. You have to chose one of your characters to do an event. I have found that it’s best to ignore the attribute matchings and just chose the best main reward (highly variable in usefulness) all the time.
It’s all very random and additional rewards are unknown before you decide to gamble for them.
A bunch of bugs and at least one notable memory leak for me on top of all that.
The game has some interesting designs amongst its bad ones but I don’t think those save the whole experience.
I would not recommend Rogue Lords.
Mahokenshi just released a demo on Steam.
A deckbuilder where you move and battle on an overland map. You can spend base energy per turn on movement and cards can have damage or different map effects.
The demo has three predesigned missions with story and sidequest threads. One of four characters available. Even just the first mission provides some opportunity to see the card interactions and synergies at play.
Oooooohhhhh!
Thanks, saves me the trouble then!
He has strangled my interest in both Rogue Lords and Erannorth Chonicles while still in the crib. Too bad. They both looked interesting.
It is “my” genre. :p
Looking back at all the many deckbuilders I played and judged since Slay the Spire I generally might err on the harsher side, but for those most recent two specifically I don’t feel too bad to be the baby strangler.
Both games provide some unique aspects to the genre but IMO aren’t worth the hassle, frustration and boring work when you could just play one of the good examples instead.
Make it three with Roguebook. Which is similar to Rogue Lords in my view in that both have excellent thematic and representational polish but very poor game-mechanics design.
I agree with you for Roguebook. That with Griftlands are my 2 biggest disappointment in this genre for this year.
I like the exploration part of Roguebook. I think it lacks run to run variety.
I’m sure someone mentioned Inscryption in this thread (or elsewhere?) but Discourse doesn’t find it. I’ve been playing the demo last night and this morning and it’s gonna be tough to not grab it when it releases on the 19th:
It’s not, of course, the usual deckbuilder, but there is a deck and you do build it.
Okay, arriving with a contrarian opinion about Rogue Lords! I freaking love it! I have had it for just 2 days and already played it for 6 hours, and it has about the same “one more fight / event / scenario” pull, for me, of Monster Train, Slay the Spire, Trials of Fire, Roguebook.
Now, I am not going to recommend it without caveat, and honestly, it does not really even belong in this thread since it is not a “deckbuilder”. There is no deck, albeit many of the game elements are very, very similar to the deckbuilders we do know and love.
Why do I love it? Why give it a cautious recommendation?
Here, just with the first 3 characters you are limited to, and their starter skills, oh and the devil essence power cheating thing, it feels like there are plenty of options, in frankness, I was a little overwhelmed at first, and it took me most of a first run to get comfortable I knew what better decisions looked like.
Yeah, this is a thing. I do not have words like @tomchick so y’all have to make do. So, there is clearly a huge load of content to be experienced here, great considering it has just launched. Relative to say, Roguebook, it appears to have more characters, more relics / passives, more skills, more viable playstyles, just more of everything. There is a lot of meta-progression too.
And the style, it does the slightly camp mock horror Tim Burton thing through and through, the characters (they have character), the dialogue, the events, the visuals, everything. It is a treat, well, unless you do not like it.
Now, this may need some post release balancing, but wow, as a grizzled vet of these games, this one so far is hitting the same magic spot as Trials of Fire. In my first run I reached the final boss and failed against him only because I entirely neglected to properly read that he had a damage reflection type buff, and I suicided. But within that run, there were three extremely challenging fights within which I thought I was done, run over, fine, cool, start again with new unlocks and understanding.
I turned each of those fights around, I went from doom and despair to elation and feelings of wow, I just did that?! Freaking amazing! I am godlike! Only a handful of games give me that feeling, and this one nailed it three times in a single initial run. That is pretty special!
