I was wondering where this “stash” was. I was playing in bed and had it locked to landscape. Nothing (that I remember) told me that I needed to rotate the game to see the inventory. So far, after the “tutorial” and one mission it seems fun.
Tom’s review is exactly what I was afraid of when I mentioned I was pissed that they don’t show you the die rolls. Looks like the black box approach they took is worse than I thought :(
If you are playing on an iPad with screen rotation locked or play with the device sitting on a table with the Smart Cover as a stand, it’s a royal pain in the ass. As an option, it’s a great idea. As a requirement, not so much.
I said it before but I’ll say it again: Anyone who is longing for a modern boardgame approach to Warhammer Quest should instead play Hero Mages.
Yes, all your stats are visible and have clear effects.
Yes, you can see the cards you’ve drawn for the turn.
Yes, you can see your die rolls.
Yes, you can turn off die rolls if you just don’t care.
Yes, there’s asynch multiplayer.
Yes, there’s an Android version. There’s even a browser version for when your tablet battery runs out, and ongoing MP games can all be accessed from any platform. (The browser version is free, by the way, but there’s only multiplayer - no AI.)
Unlike Warhammer Quest, there’s no fog of war (though there is line of sight). The map is big and laid out before the game starts. Yes, you can design your own maps if you pay an IAP.
When you first play there will be a timer that cuts off your turn if you dilly-dally. Yes, you can disable the stupid timer.
This game is hard. No, really, it’s brutal. You’ll be fighting, say, three spear guys and a four boy guys, and WHAM! a random card or whatever generated six more guys–behind you. And no, it does not really tell you why, or give any reason, it just happens.
I’ve died twice now–whole party wipes, that is–and haven’t gotten any farther than the first room or two in what seems to be the/a main quest line for the first village.
Oh, and I figured out that in town, you just, yeah, rotate the iPad to get to the inventory/stash, just like in the dungeons. Doh. Whoever decided to eschew an inventory/stash button and instead require screen rotation should be fed to skaven.
Magnet, re Hero Mages:
I served many beers over WHQ. WHQ was a favorite game of mine. Hero Mages, you’re no WHQ. :) It has mages, swords, spells, and dice, but that is about it. Unless they completely overhauled it, HM was simply (an essentially competitive) digital miniatures skirmish game.
Hah!
Yeah, I knew posting it was venturing deep into First-World Problems territory, but it’s a valid complaint regardless. On any system, requiring physical movement or rotation for what should be a simple button press is a cardinal sin of usability.
Sweet! That is the WHQ I remember. I haven’t played the iOS version enough yet, but it was mostly what you described within a large pool of random content that made the original so memorable. I was worried it was not really part of this game, and I am still worried the game is too campaign focused to get the real “WHQ, short random runs of doom” feel.
What caused it is a random event probably generated by a 1 roll on the Winds of Power roll at the start of every turn. I haven’t experienced it myself yet, but when I saw it happen in a video there was a tool tip that at least hinted at the mechanic. You should be able to mitigate its effect a bit with careful positioning at the end of turns sort of like Space Hulk (or X-com for the digital only crowd).
I love it. I haven’t played WQ before, and I’m not very bothered by not knowing exactly what is going on under the hood. The inventory system is great, but turning the iPad to access it is kind of wonky.
It’s sufficiently hard, but not overly so. I’ve finished three of the main quest dungeons and about five or six extra dungeons. My party is level 3 or 4 now. I play on hardcore and I’ve only lost one character, in the very beginning.
So how many hours of game play would you get for your 5 bucks?
I actually kind of like the interface for accessing your inventory. It reminds me of the ZombiU forcing you to put your nose into the gamepad screen, which creates a sense of hunkering down to dig in your backpack. Now I’m shifting this thing in my hands to see what I’m carrying in my pockets.
But, yeah, it’s one of the many ways that Rodeo Games is oblivious as a designer that they don’t also offer a button to access your inventory. I’d also like an option to control animation speeds. I really don’t need to watch a hundred rats cross five hundred tiles to miss me eighty times. I have better things to do.
-TomThe Fast Forward button doesn’t really help, either. It’s a problem with the Hunters games too, though it’s less annoying here because the dungeons are pretty confined, even more so than the maps in Hunters/Hunters 2.
And I am so out:
I didn’t see this before, but I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. It’s easy enough to ignore the real money auction house in Diablo III. But to be presented with this when I accidentally tapped on something I couldn’t afford? What a sad little mercenary excuse for a boardgame port this turned out to be.
Can I change my review to one star?
-TomI found that disconcerting too, though it doesn’t bug me as much as it bugs you–from what I can tell, “mercenary” is the byword for iOS games these days. What strikes me though is that there is so little in the game to buy (so far) to excite me enough to make me even think about spending real money on in-game gold. It seems almost pathetic, really.
You know iOS allows you to turn off in-app purchases, right? You can yell “get off my lawn!” as you do it, too. I would only be offended if they adjusted the gold drop rate/item values from the base game so as to make gold purchase a necessity to enjoy the game. Otherwise, who gives a damn?
As many beta testers have confided, you’ll soon have cash overflowing out your buttox in the game and these cash IAPs are totally optional. The game is not geared toward forcing needless grinding to get things.
Which is why I find it rather pathetic, in some ways–it makes what is obviously a nicely polished and pretty high-end (as these things go) game look like it’s in the same category as any number of hideous freemium games that flood the store.
With all due respect, this IAP is listed right right there along with the other WHQ IAP in the iTunes store, before you make the purchase. So the only ones who might be surprised by this IAP are those who don’t have to pay for the game, like reviewers.
So… I just had my first 1 roll in the power phase/ Winds of Power phase; it seems WHQ iOS calls this a “Surprise Attack” that interrupts the wizard’s attempt to use the force, er power. Unfortunately this then generated a pile of Night Goblin archers at the far end of the hall my party was in before the room of the current battle. They did this because I had my wizard tucked in at the back and just across the doorway threshold. By the board game rules, when a 1 is rolled in the power phase the monsters will all spawn in any ONE of the rooms that any party members currently occupy (chosen at random). It seems my Wizard pulled the short stick.
But that’s okay, the main fight was going well and I pulled the Barbarian back to cover ol’ Magicless McGoodfornothing back in the hallway. However, it seems my wizard skipped more than one day of wizard school at some point because in the very next power phase… another surprise attack. It just got ridiculous after that. Bandages were applied, stone bread was quaffed, and scrolls were read, but it was just a total mess.
Until… a lucky deathblow chain by the Barbarian. He was surrounded on all sides and in an amazing karmic reversal he scored something like four deathblows in a row and cleared most of the hall in one swing. I managed to heal the dying and make a stellar recovery at that point. As a nice bonus, while sifting through the hordes of giant rat and Night Goblin corpses I found a nice +1 toughness amulet for the Elf. Good times.
Still, I can already see I will miss any kind of lone adventure mode. The game seems deeply rooted in the RPG rules/ campaign structure. While this is overall full of awesome, I was hoping for a way to just run some level 1s (or generically geared levels 2 etc) through random dungeons with fixed or random quest templates to see if I can make it or with how much gold; essentially like in the base WHQ game. Failing this option, I was hoping I at least could just hire extra guys and plop them in a side quest dungeon, but it seems you can have 1 and 1 only of each class. Maybe they will let me throw money at them later for this feature.
Wait, I’m confused- there seems to be bunches of side quest dungeons. Is there something I’m not understanding here?