Gameplay-wise it is nothing like Darkest Dungeon, though they are both deep, challenging, and don’t hold your hand. I’d pull up a video and see how it works.
It doesn’t really feel like a progression at all. You ‘unlock’ new things that are added to the drop tables but they’re generally not particularly better than other things. After each of the first few wins it expands the duration of a run (adds more levels and enemy types) and that’s basically it.
I liked the game and would say it was worth it value wise but got bored before ever winning the longest game length. The early stages are trivial when you know how to play but trying to rush them or otherwise progress faster will basically auto lose the game when it finally gets challenging.
My experience was similar. I like the game but felt it got a bit too grindy for me. But it is a clever design and can be relaxing to play since you can control the pace.
I wish I liked it as well. It felt a bit like a rythm game of the Playstation area, where you have to reproduce patterns to get a proper combo going, but in free-form. The meta-progression is a bit slower than other games in the genre.
Overall, what I didn’t enjoy was the unstoppable hoards coming at me, and that feeling during some fights than I am just pushing them back a bit buying time, and not really fighting them. But it might be due to both me sucking and/or not having done the grind Mysterial and Bernie_Dy talked about. The game is probably much more rewarding if you invest some time in it. It wans’t casual enough for me!
… Oh my, sometimes reading one’s own cluelessness hurt…
Anyway, for some reason, I jumped back into it (inspired by Into the Breach? Who knows), and half-way through a playthrough, it suddenly totally tilted. I sure took my time!
One of the definitive factors that improved my experience was ditching the gamepad controls and going for the mouse ones. They feel much more intuitive to me.
Anyways, it is a really absorbing game, once you get into its groove. I see totally what it is doing now, and once you get past that learning cliff, it is very rewarding.
So funny you would post this now. Just a few days ago I too jumped back into it. I’m struggling to get past the second boss battle but I think overall I’m playing better than before. One of my problems is I need to relax a bit more and ponder each move during the pause. I’ve lost some battles where I forgot I’d picked up a spell that would have helped immensely.
The game does a really bad job explaining anything, eh!
The second boss, I understood in its last phases what I should really have been doing! I played it for over 20 minutes what should have taken 5, I guess.
What I understood too late: your real target are those silly statues, and not the everspawning zombies. When they are all destroyed, you get a shot at the boss himself.
I find it really interesting that, although it is paused, I still managed to fumble and panic quite a lot, resulting in stupid situations where I was thrown out of the “rhythm” of the fight, so to speak.
Debating this one at the moment. I’ve picked up several things recently, so I don’t need something to play. I’d also rather have it digitally. But the physical version for Switch is on sale for 10 bucks at GameStop right now.
Ten bucks…hmmm. Well if you’ve got more action packed stuff to play and you’re in an action mood, go there and pick this up later. It’s a neat game but has a really different kind of play style with its pause enabled real time. I suspect it’ll also be cheaper digitally.
No. Digital is 20.
Gotcha. I think when I got mine it might have been in a PC bundle, so it was not a lot. At the price you quoted for digital…I would play other stuff first.
I’ve been playing this a ton over the last few days. It took a while to click, but now I’ve gotten in a groove and managed to take down the first three pirate bosses. Really liking the way the combat system is opening up now that I’m making meaningful choices among spells and items rather than guessing blindly.
It’s kind of odd that the titular premise of having old and run-down heroes doesn’t seem to have informed the game design at all, as far as I can tell.
I think the only through-line into the gameplay is that you’re babysitting the two princesses. Currently relevant heroes presumably wouldn’t have to do that.
-Tom
I cleared the game for the fifth time today, and the more I look back at it, the stranger the early game seems.
At the point where I am, most of the items are revealed. I can finally make proper decisions, while getting the occasional excitement of the unidentified item.
But I can still remember the early state of the game where everything was a black box. It is such a shame the designers of this game wore blinders and didn’t feel the need to ease up the way into their game. It can be felt also in the strange way you unlock characters, who have slots dedicated to enhance spells you will unlock only once you clear the next run. That took me a while to wrap my mind around.
But 30 hours in, it is still a very enjoyable and “fresh” game.
I’m in the same place as you. Over the long weekend I finally got through a couple wins and I’m getting more powerful items.
But I’ve also figured out that the slot bonuses for spells are only for the one spell in that slot and aren’t unlocked bonuses for the party. That’s kind of a pisser. Because spells are random I’ve ended up playing many games where those bonuses were useless to me. With experience you can get better at choosing and placing spells but you can’t reorganize the spell locations so especially the first time you discover a spell there is a good chance you’ll miss the bonus.
Nice game, makes more sense as you play, but a couple tweaks would help it a lot.