I’ve never played a a game so much in Early Access, put it down and then played just as much if not more upon release as I did with the original. It all clicked for me. Just the right amount of complexity, RPG and party/town management. It all seemed to be in perfect balance and, while punishing, rarely did I care if guys died or I wiped. The gameplay was so compelling and all the death and damaged seemed to integrate perfectly into the gameplay.
Plus, the voiceover. I don’t know how important it was to the experience, but I don’t think it would have been the same without the well-written dialog and his voice.
Now I just need to stay distracted for a few months and leave it in the oven a bit longer.
Agreed on the dialog and voicework, but but had very different experiences with the game. I got into DD in mid/late EA when there were still good tricks for an experienced player to get through a dungeon fairly safely. Maybe not on a boss run, but on a regular run to gather loot/XP one could be careful with camping and bring the right mix of HP healing and sanity healing in the party composition that almost guaranteed getting out of a dungeon in one piece with no characters really screwed up. I LOVED that game. Challenging but beatable and with a definite feeling of progression. According to Steam I put like 500 hours into that game.
The problem is that the devs considered any strategies or tricks that avoided the game being a grueling painful slog full of frustration to be “bugs” so they kept patching them out. I watched DD get patched from one of my all-times-faves into a horrible game that I didn’t want to, and still don’t want to to, play in any fashion.
It would have been a totally different game. The voice overs send into to the epic realm. It’s brilliant, poignant, and powerful that ads a layer impossible to experience any other way. Developers all too often neglect, sound and music and it hurts their game more than they think.
I think the difference is that XCOM lets the player feel like they’re constantly on the edge of disaster, but they are almost never in as much danger as they believe. Even when they totally wipe on a mission, recovery is easier than it looks and losing the game is really really hard. DD doesn’t have a lose condition, so it can just fuck the player up and tell them to deal with it. Which often makes me just delete the estate and rage quit. But I always come back to it.
You like what you like, but it was never supposed to be this game. It was always planned to be about attrition and dealing with disasters. And some players still manage play safely.
I have to say, my first impression is not very good. Great atmosphere, sound and graphical design, not surprisingly. The mechanics and balancing however…
Coach travel is a really slow slog for no reason.
Hope you enjoy having your party hate each other a bit more for “stealing my kill” each time someone lands a killing blow.
90% of trinkets and items are +10% resist to something. yawn
Hot tip: use your starting skill upgrade on the Plague Doctor “Ounce of Prevention” skill to reduce stress on all units.
I’ve done two carriage rides so far and I’m not all that impressed either. You have fewer choices for your characters (probably because of EA but hey), I miss the original narrator, the new guy is not as good. You have less options for controlling the torch, and stress. But I really don’t like the distressed pull overs, because you have to pick one of the options, and you never know who is going to hate each other over the selection. The carriage ride is so slow, and the main gameplay I can fathom for this bit is you moving the cart between Left and right to run over shit…for reasons…
Oh no disagreement. I’m not going to say something silly like the devs accidentally didn’t make the game they set out to make. Quite the opposite. I’m saying the devs accidentally made a much better game and then ruined it in the course of turning it into the game they wanted they make.
Really?!? I would not have guessed. His voice isn’t in the same register even… maybe it was messed with more in #1… or this one… weird. Well, I don’t like em as much lol
I never really developed or watched any of those tricks. I’d see people talking about tips and tricks in threads, but I usually avoid those and muddle through on my own never figuring anything out. :) It was difficult, but I ended up figuring enough out that it was a joy despite the difficulty. Completely understand where you are coming from, though.
Sure you do. While hovering over a chat icon, those heroes who agree with the selection will have a golden halo around them while those who disagree will have a blue halo. It’s explicitly explained in the tutorial.
I found the carriage a little obtuse at first, but after starting a new run, I have a better feel for what’s going on, and I like what I’m seeing. Seems to be in very good shape for early access, and I have little doubt I’ll end up playing this a ridiculous number of hours, same as I did the first game.
Could be! I will say the hover-over halos aren’t as pronounced as the post-selection halos. I didn’t see them at first, despite knowing about them via the tutorial, so the noticeability could be improved.
I was little underwhelmed after my first run. Now in my second run, I’m starting to see more mechanics interplaying with each other in a most satisfactory manner.
