When I played the Superdemo I figured that the sounds were placeholders. I was very wrong.
Thanks for the detailed and serious review.
I must say, though, that from the perspective of anyone other than a die-hard fan of this sort of nostalgia gaming, your dispassionate and level-headed summary pretty much screams “run away!”
To anyone other than someone jonesing for a reprise of decades-old gameplay, complete with last-century bugs and glitches, this seems to be a steaming turd of a game.
Yes, to be fair the game seems to have always been explicitly marketed to that specific audience.
Yes, I’d rate the sound effects as below average. They get the job done, but they can be annoying at times and also sometimes very out of place. Combat in particular can cycle through some effects frequently enough that you’ll find yourself lowering the sfx volume.
My impression is someone had a bundle of royalty free sound effects and tried to find something or anything that was in that pile that could be used. I hope someone makes a mod that replaces most of the sound effects with a more consistent and sane selection. “I’d buy that for a dollar!”
Thank you for the great interaction example. Now I know I won’t stand that game!
Pretty much. In other words, I think you can reasonably accept or gag on this game, depending on where you come from. While that’s true to some extent for many games, I think something like this is more polarizing than most. The subset of gamers that will like this is probably pretty small.
I’ve been playing CRPGs since about 1984 so I like to think I can handle a little old schoolyness. But yeah, this one I think I will file under ‘life’s too short,’ independent of the fact that I don’t desire to put money in Cleve’s pocket.
Totally offtopic, and apples and oranges, but I was just reading the latest couple of Steam updates from Unreal World’s Sami Maaranen, and the contrast with some other game developer is hilarious.
Neat! Cleve pushed out an update last night (version 1.2.0.7) that breaks saved games. The game crashes upon attempt to load them. I was fortunate enough to be able to revert to the previous version (1.2.0.5), but in the meantime anyone who re-installs (auto updates are not yet working), will lose all their progress.
TL;DR Wait for more patches before touching this or brace yourself for an “adventure”
As a parent of very small children, I’m going to keep this brief and polite.
Arguments against save anywhere can… never mind. You are entitled to your opinion, and I am entitled to think it is a bad opinion. Let’s leave it at that.
The PC master race must outbreed the neanderthals.
That has to be a far nastier blow than general UI clunkiness and bad sound effects. Blakemore certainly didn’t need this just as the game seemed to be enjoying some good wind under its sails in terms of player feedback. Steam scores reached a peak yesterday of 75% but today they dropped to 71%.
I imagine one of the main problems with a game of this (purported) scope and grindy mechanics is player fatigue. The perspective of having your 100+ hour investment erased via an automatic update (and the crippling uncertainty about whether it will be an isolated incident or just the first of many) has to be a major turnoff even for diehard fans.
Breaking savegames is an unforgivable sin.
Bunker upgrade achievement unlocked!
Right, right. Likewise. Sigh, that was 30 posts ago.
Anyway, so how 'bout that Cleve, he sure is what he is, eh?
In my few experiments with limiting save games in the past in RPG’s, they have been mostly met with howls are rage and cries of “WHAT? I CAN"T SAVE THERE!” I even tried with a pay in-game gold to save mechanic with one of my games (a small amount of gold really), and there was much outrage. I imagine if there was save points or limited save mechanisms, most would have been upset.
Probably more important to be able to save anywhere if a random enemy encounter very early on can just wipe you out instantly, too, I guess. I’m fine with save points if a game is well-balanced to begin with.
Breaking save games is okay as long as he fixes it quickly. Corrupting them is a true nightmare. I’ll be surprised if that doesn’t happen to Grimoire at some point.
Every game should allow suspend anywhere in order to accommodate the player’s real world priorities. But freely reloadable full saves are a different story, and wind up bleeding into very real game design and balance concerns.
I don’t care about your very real concerns. Save anywhere or gtfo.
Yes, breaking all the old save games is huge. I see Cleve posted a bit ago saying he was able to duplicate the problem and would work on a fix after getting some sleep.
Hopefully he’s able to fix it. It seems with each update he fixes something and inadvertently breaks something else. I’ll revisit the game in a couple days after he’s made more progress with patches.
He’s perhaps lucky that since he has his steam manifest improperly configured such that no auto-updates happen, he might be able to get a fix out with less affected customers than if everyone had automatically upgraded to 1.2.0.7.