I didn’t see a thread, but I’m sure Andrew will show me if I’m wrong. Anyway, this game really has me intrigued. Apparently, you are defending a fort. It’s like a turret defense game. You set up walls, traps, turrets, etc. before the enemy comes. But you still have to use weapons and magic to help defend the fort. So it seems to be like an action RPG with an interesting building twist. Anyone else looking forward to this one?
Oh, it’s a DS game, to clarify.
My brother worked on this, so I’m pumped about it. :D
Oh really? I know you may be a bit biased, but is he pleased with the results? The key for me to liking this game is how well the combat is balanced with the fortification aspect. I want to help with the fights, but I also want my placements to help. I want a nice balance there, but it’s really hard for me to quantify what that would mean in gameplay terms. It will have to FEEL right.
Official site is now open, in advance of Tuesday’s US release, and it features a flash game that gives you a taste of the battle mode.
I may wait for a review or two, but I’m itching to make this a day one purchase.
I’m into this, too. My DS gets more use than any other system in our house. And with this and Populous and ATLUS’ new dungeon digging game and Disgaea I may never put it down.
Ooh, that Flash game is kinda cool, if simplistic. I like these kinds of games. I’m pretty excited about this.
So it’s a game based around turtling? Awesome. I love that, especially since every RTS in recent memory has done their best to make sure that’s not a valid strategy. The bastards.
I played the demo on DS, downloaded at PAX, and it does seems unique but also far from perfect.
I’m not saying it’s bad, mind you. It’s not. I just felt it had enough awkwardness and repition (at the beginning of the game at least) to keep it from being a must-have.
Anyone else playing this yet? After a week, I’m on Day 21 (out of 100) and enjoying it a lot.
The plot is forgettable so far but the gameplay is a well-done combo of Tower Defense and some basic RTS elements. Basically you have two main modes, Build and Battle, and both are timed. In build mode, you place walls, turrets, traps and robotic helpers. Some maps carry over to succeeding missions, and in those cases you can repair existing walls and turrets in build mode. Traps don’t carry over.
In battle mode, you have a variety of objectives. Sometimes you must protect a well, so you end up staying close to home and simply repairing walls during the Clockworks’ siege. Other times you are forced to venture out and defeat particular units or rescue others. In these missions, you may still have to run back to your fortification and do quick repairs.
In combat, your character has both special attacks for one-on-one melee, and ‘super abilities’ that build up and affect large numbers of bad guys when activated. If you die, you have the option of starting again in build mode, or keeping your build and starting right at the battle phase. And you can adjust the difficulty of a particular map at the start. Strategic use of traps, I’m finding, is essential to success at normal and hard modes.
There’s also a separate Siege mode in which you control the turrets; play this on the side between missions to build up your cash supply.
Winning each mission usually involves both Lock and the fortified object surviving by the time the clock runs out – even if numerous Clockwork units remain on the map. I’ve had a few truly heart-stopping battles so far, with the well I’m defending about to collapse as the clock ticked down its final seconds.
And they include a DS manual-sized comic book in the package as well; a nice touch.
You just answered the one question I had, which was whether or not the build portion was timed. I’m afraid that puts me on the sidelines for this one. I hope it sells well, though.
This disappointed me as well. I wanted unlimited time to tweak and fiddle during the build phase. But I’m used to it now. FWIW, you get 3 minutes to build the first time a map appears, and 2 min. in subsequent missions that use the same map.
Does that seem adequate? Do you feel rushed?
Most of the time its adequate. I mainly feel rushed when seeing a map for the first time. And as I’ve progressed, I’m getting the hang of the interface, include use of the left shoulder button to quickly rotate a wall or turret, and thus can deploy stuff much more quickly. Only a couple of times so far has the clock run out before I felt satisfied with the build.
I never felt rushed in the demo, at least.
Except for the fact that walls have this bizarre facing mechanic – as in each wall/corner segment has an ‘outside’ and an ‘inside’. That, in turn, leads to a fumbly rotation mechanic so you can make sure the outside is always facing the direction you want.
I don’t understand why they insisted on doing that. It’s rather clunky and frustrating to rotate those pieces and line them up just so. It seems like it would have been far more graceful to let users just ‘draw’ walls online onto the map. No mess, no fuss.
Can anyone who’s played the full game comment on whether or not that wall-facing business ends up being worth it? In the demo, it just struck me as a remarkably poor design decision.
The only time I had any trouble with the build time limit was as a result of fumbling with rotating and placing pieces, and the fumbly UI around all that.
I am in mourning due to the sudden death of my DS, but I just wanted to chime in to say that Hiro’s last sentence really nails it. That fumbling is the thing that can make the time limit annoying.
Great game so far, though. Would that I could play it!
A moment of silence…
Its worth it in the sense that the front of the wall has a better defensive value.
As I mentioned, you can rotate the walls as you place them quickly by hitting the left shoulder button, so after a short time putting the front side toward the oncoming battle becomes quick and second nature. If you didn’t have that shortcut and had to use the stylus to rotate a piece, it would be a royal pain.
I didn’t realize DS’s could die. I thought that only happened to Sony and Microsoft hardware. What happened?
So I played Lock’s Quest and then accidentally deleted my freakin’ data because my fingers are so fat. No way I’m going back through those early JRPG baby stages with a whole lot of nothing but talking anime characters.
-TomSorry, I guess I was specifically asking if the mechanic was worth it. i.e. does it get enough use, make enough difference, and is it used in interesting enough ways to justify the (IMO) pretty massive complications and burdens it imposes on the UI and building process?
… compared to, say, just being able to ‘draw’ walls on the map without having to worry about rotating/placing/fitting pieces and then accidentally moving a pre-placed chunk around.
Isn’t that what the stylus is for?