A bunch of Microsoft execs attempted to increase the revenue from the Minecraft brand by releasing a bare bone game that copies old concepts and brings nothing new to the table. They have probably been taking notes from Blizzard and their shitty Heroes of the Storm.
This is definitely not for me and I suspect it won’t be a hit with the kids either. They are not playing Minecraft for the art style…
If you give this game to your 6 year old as a kids’ game, they are going on to be in for a shock when they die repeatedly. There is challenge in the game, especially playing solo. It’s a nice one for parents and kids together for sure though.
As for myself, I have a few hundred paragon levels in Diablo 3 and I’ve still been enjoying this one on my own. It’s not a replacement for that game by any means and will not stay near as long in my playlist with the current content. But it’s not a minimum effort product. No jankiness, very responsive and good smart targeting (playing with a controller). It can definitely use more loot and variety. We will see how they improve over time.
It actually felt janky to me trying to play it with mouse/keyboard. The issues with it are mentioned in the video above; blocky terrain at different heights just does not translate well into mouseclicks with that camera angle. Especially coupled with the fact that the game has no shame in obfuscating your character with random foreground objects from time to time. As cardinal a sin as I can think of for this particular genre.
I’d pick up a controller and get a feel for the difference but in my impotent nerd rage I already uninstalled it. And I’m too bitter, old and curmudgeony to bother grabbing it again. Though not too bitter, old and curmudgeony to want to stop whining about it. That is, after all, one of the perks.
Bummer for you. The kid and I are enjoying it coop quite a bit. As much as we enjoy coop torchlight or far cry. Just stop. $20. Worth it for sure.
I’ve had some fun with it just playing solo. May get to try some co-op later.
Bluddshed’s review / Q&A stream excerpts (his main focus as a streamer / Youtuber is Diablo III):
Also discusses “What’s the end game?” The short answer being get ready for future or content (Island Realms) and/or flesh out your gear (upgrade the enchantments for the various builds you use…).
One thing that was helpful to learn, you reclaim the enchantment points you invest in weapons if you deconstruct them. I had been holding off enchanting stuff because I didn’t want to lose the points, oh well.
Definitely. I mentioned that earlier in the thread. You don’t need to worry about inventory space, but it’s need to know you can recover enchantment points.
I am really surprised so little of the environment is not destructible or interactable.
While I agree that this game is definitely a 6 or 7 out of 10 if compared to Diablo (or other similar games), as mentioned above it is great for playing with younger kids. I’ve had a hard time finding a game that is simple enough for my five year old to grasp but also interesting enough for me not to get bored, so I am happy that this game fulfill both those requirements. Also, once my kid has mastered this, then it will open the door to many other more complicated games for us to play.
My biggest complaint is the performance of the Switch version. We experience serious input lag in some areas while playing yesterday. Hopefully, with some patches, this will improve.
Ok new revised Switch opinion. This game sucks. Tried to play co-op with my daughter. I was able to select my character just fine. Trying to pick her character is a ridiculous mess. Doesn’t accept any input other than the L1 bumper. After much annoyance I find out on reddit that the game doesn’t like mixing a non - joycon controller with a joycon. Wtf? I was using the non-joycon and it worked fine but was screwy for her with the joycon. Had to restart using just two joycons instead.
And apparently only the main character gets to sign in. Everyone else is just a guest. Again, wtf?
Maybe I’ll feel better later and I’ve forgotten how much time I wasted trying to get this damn game to work for us.
Is there no way to transfer drops between players? I want to give the good stuff to my 6yo, but I can’t, even though we are playing co-op together. I have had a couple of bits of gear drop for me only that are significantly better than anything that has dropped for him.
Yeah, that was my third annoyance I forgot to mention. There are reserved drops but seems to be no way to share with other players. Why?
If so that is monumentally dumb.
You can’t play with a kid of any age, get an awesome drop and not have them either beg for you to give it to them, or have them get upset or frustrated they didn’t get it. It’s like they don’t know their audience.
Agreed. Right now, it is like playing Diablo Seasons characters. They can play co-op, but they are islands that can never share drop between accounts (you can, however, stash items on your own account and have another Season character of yours pick up loot from the stash. The stash is another thing not yet in Dungeons). That kind of restriction is really not needed in Dungeons.
Drops should be tagged so there isn’t a hoarder issue. But then you should be able to trade.
I can’t see this not being added in a post launch patch though. It’s likely just a matter of time.
Not only that, but vases that on controller you press A to “smash” (same as attack) doesn’t have you actually smash the vase. It just pops out some emeralds and is extremely unsatisfying. It’s so much little things that could have gone a small way here.
The guy in the video who said he couldn’t play a melee focused character was just bad or made no effort, I think. Was watching a streamer playing primarily melee at lvl 34. He had a mercenary armor variant, plus enchants that brought him to 50% dmg resist, life steal on his weapon, and a healing totem (which he was considering replacing, because he didn’t need it much).
Played some co-op with @Oscuros last night. Looking forward to doing that some more.
Finished first campaign run through with the kid. He was mostly melee, I had a range spec…he kicked ass against the final level while I suffered a bit as I kept running out of arrows. I get frustrated with that but also like it as I need to try and conserve the arrows and put a bit more into melee. The kid is all melee and he rocks.
I started later on the new adventure level. First map more mobs so I had to go slower and take my time. 2 sets of those damn bone horse riding archers appeared and some other enchanted badies. It was a lot more interesting with more variety of enemies…got some cool new loot. But, I did experience a lot of slowdown and stuttering for a bit…the worst I’ve seen in abouit 6 hours of playing. Definitely need to patch that out if they can…it was offline so that’s a little concerning.
Still enjoying it a lot though.
Indeed. If you watch Bluddshed stream, he is over level 130 and was playing a melee character just fine. See this video where he is in his 90ies for example: Twitch
He’s been playing melee pretty consistently throughout.
Anyone else have problems with the high frame rate options in the game? If I set it to 120 or 144hz the game would stutter wildly and ping-pong rapidly between over 100fps and 24fps. Luckily 60fps was smooth.