Nice update today: free Mali Mystery DLC and the incorporation of leaderboards!
Thanks for posting that up here, Mysterio. It’s been a lot of work to add a whole expedition, but people seem to love it.
If there’s any questions about the game here, I’d be happy to answer them.
Thanks for joining us here! It’s always nice to have developers contributing to threads for their games.
Looks like Scott’s struggling with grasping the combat. Throw him a lifeline, Manuel!
TotalBiscuit has done of his WTF reviews of REIS and absolutely loves it, calling it the best game he has played this year.
I have to also say this game rocks. It’s the sleeper hit of the year. I keep coming back to it constantly. I really hope more people check it out.
I really want to like it, I just can’t figure out the combat. I’m just randomly guessing if something will work, and sometimes it does and sometimes it does not. It’s frustrating, to say the least.
What aspects of combat are you finding confusing? Can you be more specific than you have been previously in this thread?
Let me see, it’s been awhile since I tried to play. I know there is a paper-rock-scissors aspect, but the first question I have is when do I know when that comes into play? If my enemy tries to be devious to I respond with whatever counters devious? Do I have to wait for them to take an action then to know what I need to counter with?
When the encounter first starts, and everything seems to be resting at neutral (I don’t really understand that bar below the characters health/spirit), how do I know what to open up with? Should I try to charm someone? Should I try to attack them? How do the numbers and stats work, like speech defense?
Stuff like that. Is there like a beginner’s guide anywhere? I wasn’t really expecting anyone to type up a thing and explain it all to me, I was really just looking for a good guide or video, as my own attempts at finding something like that failed… (unhelpfully, I linked the wrong post above).
From the TotalBiscuit WTF video I saw (and I may be wrong) the human party starts out at neutral, but you can see what the attitude of the other team is (it’s displayed in the top center of the screen). So it seems to me you want to use attacks that are strong against their current attitude. Plus you want to factor that into the strengths/weaknesses your character will show in the attitude you’re going to, and filter that against what attitude you want to end the battle at (for any post-battle rewards). So it seems like a balancing act between all those (possibly) competing viewpoints.
You want to manage the mood of the battle based on the rps wheel they display on the screen. You start out being able to choose your mood based on the first attack so that is an important one. See which one the enemy starts with and pick the counter. Watch out if it changes in the middle of the battle and you have to react quickly. Then when choosing an individual attack the stats and skills of each explorer come into play, I just run through each attach and see what the damage and mood results are before choosing an attack.
WAIT WUT.
I must have completely missed this was a thing.
Thanks for all the updates and tips guys, I’ll give it a shot here in a bit. I love the game, honestly, if I could get a handle on the encounters it would be a HUGE game for me, I think.
I agree with everything that’s been said since my previous post.
With regards to the meter below each character’s spirit bar, that’s one of the things you have to manage, along with the RPS attitude between you and your opponents, and the overall mood goal shown in the upper-left. Whichever of those three goals is most prominent at the end of the battle will determine your reward for the encounter. So you really need to take advantage of the RPS mechanism if you want to succeed in individual attacks, but sometimes that will lead you away from the juiciest end-encounter reward.
The RPS and overall mood are affected by the individual attacks you choose to use for each of your characters. Every character has a default physical attack, which doesn’t affect anything, other than pissing off the enemy character; their mood, though, won’t change as a result. Your characters’ other abilities, though, directly impact the RPS, the overall mood, and an enemy’s mood. Each enemy usually has buffs and debuffs to particular moods, so you have to factor those in, as well, when you’re choosing with whom to attack and with what ability.
Each battle really is mood management, which at times feels like trying to balance three bowling balls on top of each other. But it sure is a blast doing so!
Also, if you’re unaware, the shimmering hexes will heal your spirit.
This is why this game needs a beginner’s guide! This stuff is all gold, thanks guys!
Yeah, when you are controlling an explorer, click just once on an enemy, then single click on each possible attack… the enemies mood and spirit bar will adjust accordingly. Click again to choose your option.
I’ve read Tom’s review and watched TotalBiscuit’s WTF. There are games where I can read a review and think “I get that”. This isn’t one of them. Watching the video I was thinking that the challenges are just random events where you decide if you want to take a risk for a reward. Since you don’t really know what’s coming up you can’t really plan and strategize for it. It just seems like pot luck.
I’m not saying it isn’t any good, just that it’s hard to get a feel for it by watching a video and reading about it. I have a gut feeling that to me it may be that charm won out over gameplay.
I didn’t like Reus so I am hesitant to believe that this would be in my wheelhouse.
You do have an idea and can strategize. When you hover over each possible POI it tells you what may be there including which kind of challenges (Physical, Nature, Intellectual, etc.). Also when you pick an expedition it tells you some backstory and what kind of challenges you may find there so you can choose wisely.
The combat is essentially two layers of rock-paper-scissors (Aggressive vs Passive vs Devious) layered on a more typical turn based strategy game. There’s the RPS mechanic as units battle each other inflicting damage, etc. and then each overall battle has an RPS “mood” which bestows various buffs and debuffs. The UI and artwork is pretty good.
To maximize points and be the best rankings you have to try to align the strengths of your team against the weaknesses of the opponents. Otherwise you wont go far.
Thanks for the info. Squee gave me a good writeup too. I think it’s a game I’ll let sit on my wishlist until it’s really cheap or part of a bundle. For some reason I just don’t have a great feeling it’ll click - hopefully I’m wrong and it will be a nice surprise sometime.
You just might! Just checked, I got a good 15 hours out of it so far and I still play it once in a while. Reus wasn’t really my thing either but I enjoy a good TBS and/or Roguelike.
Discovered this last night and promptly lost six hours to it. Just fantastic. Played three different groups and eventually led Anna (wow, she’s… strong) and an all-ladies explorers team (Hattice and the lady magician) to become Explorers of the Year at Shangri-La around midnight last night. Just fantastic. Played Adventure and Classic for my first two runs before getting smashed and deciding to go down to Discovery and Normal for my win, so that might account for part of why my run with Anna was so good, but I also figured out the nuances of the combat system only around that third run. Just a really great game all around; a roguelike (man, I hate that term in its current state) that might actually hold my interest.
Any sense as to what the differences (aside from save/load) are between Discovery and Adventure mode? I wish the online tools were as robust as the in-game reference. I need something to peruse at work. :)