Well I finally got to play some of this tonight. So far I really enjoyed the combat, but I’m mostly looking forward to getting farther in the game so the combat is even more varied. What I like right now is mostly the potential of the system. I also like that the decks I build are limited to 8 cards for each character, rather than having to think about dozens of cards in long extended combat scenarios.
I’m already tired of the combat music though, as it’s very repetitive and there’s very little variation in it. The “comedic” dialogue writing is just ghastly, it’s so insipid it hurts. But I’m only on chapter 3 or 4 so maybe it gets better later. But this game has nothing on the Southpark jRPG games in this respect.
I also absolutely hate the narrator that announces each chapter (the sickly old guy with the warbly voice). I don’t think they could have chosen a worse guy for a narrator, at least for me. I hate weak warbly voices. But I look forward playing, getting new cards, and seeing some other scenery.
Right now the biggest draw is the combat system, the rest of the game could be trimmed back to a Card Crawl mobile experience and it would be for the better, but I’m still early in yet.
Started a bit. The backgrounds look weirdly Vanillaware-y.
The game has a frame story that it’s being told by one of the characters in Heist to his…grandson? as a story that happened long ago. So, no direct connections.
They talk about banishing an ancient evil and burying it underground. I’m assuming that will be somehow related to the Vectron (the mostly-evil race of electronic robots), but that’s just shared noun-world building really, there’s no story connections.
As far as the overall story is concerned, Dig 2 is a direct sequel to Dig 1, where you’re looking for the protagonist (player character) from Dig 1. The events at the end of Dig 2 make clear why the situation in Heist is how it is. It’s not necessary to play the games in order; they all stand on their own pretty well.
I’m curious to see how Quest fits into this. Really looking forward to this being released on GOG.
I only just hit chapter 3 and this is how I feel as well. The story has yet to come into focus, but the characters are kind of bland and the dialog has been generally poor.
The deckbuilding is very solid, though. With 8 cards per character, the game does a great job of limiting the range of decisions while still giving you a ton of flexibility within those bounds. I’m excited to play more and see what kind of card combinations will become available to mess around with.
I could NOT stop playing this last night, getting over 4 hours in and on Chapter 5. I unlocked a new party member, lots of great cards that let me already sort of define a role for a given character, and am pleased with normal difficulty for being tough but fair. I had a few close calls, but using consumables got me up and running again, which is nice as I normally just hoard/never use consumables in games like this.
I agree about the combat music, but I tend to find that’s true of every game I’ve ever played, so I usually turn the music off. I just keep forgetting to do it here. This is the kind of game I’d play with Netflix on but it looks so good on my TV I haven’t played undocked much so far.
I am enjoying the characters as much as I did in Dig and Heist - which is to say, the writing is fine and they are fine, but I’m only here for the gameplay. This is generally true for me for every game though. And I’m finding the gameplay here incredibly absorbing and fun.
Got to act 2 tonight. Boss fights are about twice as long as they need to be, which is either a sign my decks are way, way too defensive, or these encounters are intended to be endurance tests.
Cards are getting much cooler and more varied, and upgrades have a definite impact. Be sure to read the details of the upgrades with “-” to see differences you’ll miss otherwise.
This has always been the case with the Steamwoeld games. The setting is charming, and the gameplay is good, but the actual dialog is generally pretty tedious at best.
Chapter 4 gets a good bit larger all of a sudden. I also accidentally finished it with only 30% chests discovered, so now I have to go do it all again…
It really needs some sort of “Are you sure you want to leave this area” system, either explicit or just some sort of visual idiom to make it clear when you’re finishing a level rather than just going to a new room…
While we’re complaining - it also needs a more useful map! The current version is way too minimal & is only a vague representation of the world you are traveling.
It’s awesome, lots of cards and once you get a new character in your party, and then another one, they have a completely different play style. Coupled with different types of weapons and accessories, and you have a ton of headroom for strategy, and some fights will demand your full attention (on Normal).
It’s … similar. Turn based, gorgeous, robots? It plays very different though, one is a cover based shooter and the other is card battles, so I’m not sure completely how to answer this, tbh.
And that’s different from any combat system how? :)
I think I’ve run out of steam* on this one. It’s a bit too simplistic for the number of battles I’m having to play. Unless something changes after chapter 3, your deck consists of eight cards for each character. That’s a lean mean 24-card deck. And on any given turn, you’ll want all three the cards you play to come from one character’s set, so that you benefit from their weapon ability. That means most turns don’t really need my input beyond making the obvious choices: I’ve got a hand of six cards, I can play three, I naturally play the three of the same color. If I don’t have three of the same color, I use my two discards to cycle whichever cards are least likely to make a set of three.
Repeat. Watch whatever I’ve got running on Netflix while the animations play out. Repeat. Etc.
Unless I’m missing something – someone tell me if I am! – that gets old pretty quick. And the only card management gimmicks I’ve seen so far are the lightning cards. Is there more card/deck management stuff beyond that?
I wanted to like this, but I just can’t find any incentive to stick with it.
I’d give it at least one or two more chapters. That approach really isn’t viable from about chapter 5 on, because of resistances and other special abilities.
This is where the strategy comes in. You start to learn different foes, and you learn these guys are very weak to ice, so load up with ice attacks/spells and take them out fast, or use Orik’s mask that flinches enemies as much as you can to keep them off balance and not up-ticking.
@tomchick there are other things that make it not viable to try and combo everyone’s cards together, for one thing you don’t always draw three chards for one character, or the three you have aren’t going to work well together/in that situation. You only get (normally) 2 re-draws, after all. Then there are combo cards, cards that do something bigger when combo’d with another character, and those can be a much bigger swing than a single character taking all the actions.
And I’ll repeat what I said weeks ago,
Now, it actually is a much bigger game than I had initially assumed - I’m almost 18 hours in and at the final chapter and have done 5 of the optional side quest fights so that’s a big swing on their part. But I was right about this being a twenty five dollar game, and expecting something with the depth of a Final Fantasy in terms of story telling or something X-COM 2 is going to be a bit unreasonable.
Grinding doesn’t work very well apart from picking up extra materials & cash. You’ll barely gain character XP because there’s a built-in advancement curve that severely limits any XP gains from grinding. Best to get those crafting parts, upgrade your bits, and then figure out how to adjust your cards and strategy to beat whatever you are stuck on.
But note that I’m only on chapter six & just barely beat the chapter 5 bosses with some retrying!
