First impressions thread

I was to fast on my judgment there. The simplicity of design hides the true power of the inventory. I would have to review my statement.

 

I absolutely love this game. The mechanics are fun, and the nostalgia is amazing. I've been bugging all my friends to sign up for beta with phrases like "It's free" and "dear god you have to play this game it's the best thing ever created by man".

That said,

I found it very frustrating when I first played mutliplayer (at Gary's prompting). Up to that point, I'd been slowly adding gear to my characters and my highest level item was level 9. Each time I got a new piece of gear it was monumental. But getting the free starter deck gave me a pile of high level gear (at least compared to my current gear) that I didn't have to work for or slowly gain. I really, really disliked that experience. I'm probably in the minority, and I hate to be all "MY IMMERSION", but it left a really bad taste in my mouth.

I would prefer if either SP/MP were more integrated (ie, remove starter decks, play with your normal heroes and equipment, just scale their levels) or totally seperate (have a SP inventory/party and a MP inventory/party and they are kept totally seperate and don't interact/share anything). The current system really bothers me. I'm sure it's less of an issue when you're further into the SP campaign, but at the point Gary bugs you to play MP, it's deeply unsatisfying (for me) to be given that pile of loot out of the blue.

 

I agree with that sentiment, even if for different reasons. While I had no use for any of my new MP loot with the power tokens they required, I find it really overwhelming and cluttered to have all the items mixing up, differentiating in shops depending on which mode I'm in, etc. I'd definitely have a lot more fun with it if it were 1:1 or entirely separate modes (assuming that if it were separate, there would still be some SP benefits for playing MP and vice versa, like shared gold?)

Or at the very least, maybe it would be an improvement if the starter decks couldn't be customized and were simply a way to jump into multiplayer with preset decks, until your proper characters are well-armed. This way you wouldn't get a pile of free loot in Single Player.

 

You can always right-click an item to show what cards it has.

If you use up your three attempts, you'll have to start again from the first fight of that adventure.

Exhausted adventures refresh once per day.

If you click on another adventure while another one is unfinished, the game will ask you if you want to leave the old adventure and thus will have to start from the beginining the next time you play it.

You can replay previously beaten adventures for XP once per day except that you'll get no XP from adventures that are 3 or more levels below your party level.
If you just want gear, you can also always leave an adventure before beating the last fight and get the items you won from the earlier fights. This just doesn't give you any XP.

Is grinding necessary? Well, depends on how well you can adapt your tactics to the different enemies.
I've played through the campaign without doing any grinding but if you happen to have bad luck with the loot, make the mistake of selling everything 'extra' or if you don't have much prior experience with strategy games then yes, some grinding will probably be needed.

 

So do you recommend not selling gear at all? Or just when it's much lower level than most of your equipment?

 

In the beginning it's usually smart to only sell treasures and duplicates.

Keeping all kinds of items around allows you to try different tactics if you run into trouble.
Plus for a new player it's not always that easy to know what items are actually useful in later adventures and what are 'safe' to sell. And you'll still need lower level items even later on as the power token system won't allow you to use all the best items you find anyway.

And like someone said, since a big part of the game is about deckbuilding, it's always good to have more items and thus more cards to choose from

 

I just got my beta key tonight. I found the game very easy to play; everything happened they way you expected, very intuitive controls. Tutorial was very informative. Game play is awesome and addictive. I haven't wanted to stop playing, must get more loot...

 

Just got my beta key. First Impressions:

I'm very excited, I want to see this come to fruition. I won't hold back any negative or positive.

This does feel and play just like a tabletop game. Being able to play a TT with people from all over is exciting, but I've always wanted to be able to do solo with something similar. This seems like the best of both. I have a TT group right now, and will do solo until I get bored.

I like not simply being told what to do, I like having options during a tutorial, but I also think there should be a little more hand-holding. I would like knowing what the heck's going on with my tutorial's opponent's decisions when I'm just starting out. In the first tut match, I still don't know what just happened irt my opponent's moves, though I did have a good understanding of how I was supposed to play. (Otherwise, we had just obtained a new game and all learn the game together, which is really what a beta is supposed to be about, amiright?) ;D

When I'm a noob learning an actual tabletop game with friends, there's usually someone more experienced who knows what's going on and explains the consequences of my actions and explains what the other person/the game/what he-or-she just did ("oh dude, she just did A, so she can now do B, and C is what's going to happen! But you could do X, or Y, to make Z happen!").

I'm a bit upset that loot disappears before I can sell it. It's just gone, I never moved it into the sell field. Some stuff just vanished, several times, I don't know why. Bug report when I know more.

When selling, an undo button or the ability to drag back items would be nice: let us drag and drop merch items with our inventory: you could move items back and forth and have the game act as your calculator before agreeing to trade.

An undo/go back button would also be nice after choosing a card that needs additional action (choosing a target for example). There were a few times where I clicked on a new card where options/lack of options meant I was stuck with a card I wish I hadn't played. It had no bearing on the card text, just my unfamiliarity with the game, and with rules that could never be explained wholly within the card's text.

I love the tone of the game and the writing. It really speaks to me, and I love the sense of humor, and the nostalgia it evokes to when I was a kid in the 80's. The art direction is top notch, and the fact that this is a digital tabletop-style game that looks like a tabletop game is awesome.

Also, while awesomely it acknowledges it's roots in table RPG's and CCG's, the style disambiguates certain digital wierdnesses like "which way is that guy facing?" "who's in cover?" "what's in range?" the same way minis and graph paper does. Even without the color-coding, the simplicity of design emphasizes the complexities of the game (the game handles the book-keeping, but you still need to know the numbers and what's happening and how it affects you), while still being charming and well executed. Love the gameplay and mechanics.

 

Also: during beta, having a replay/rewind option would solve lot of "what just happened, and why didn't I get what happened?" issues with basic beta. And yes, I know, that's a tester's magical-wishlist item, I just had to mention it.

 

Alright, i just got into beta yesterday, and managed to get a good hour of gameplay before doozing off, and i was not dissapointed. For the record, my party is only level four and i already cleared the highway and workshop modules. I believe i progresses a little fast because i studied what most cards did before playing (I tend to do that with card games, relieves a lot of the entry barrier), so i could glance at stuff and understand what was going on

The game is exactly how i felt it would be. The progression is dynamic and doesn´t feels forced. The tutorials are clear and everything moves silky smooth in the UI, even the animation speed is manipulable, should you feel you don´t understand what´s going on or already know it and you skip ahead. Of course, so far i haven´t had lost any modules (I have a fair experience with CCGs, and they shouldn´t be killing you this early anyways), but it doesn´t means there were no difficulties. For instance, my poor experience in this game in particular costs my Elven Mage her life at least every other battle, and that´s great; most starting levels of online games barely even get to dent you most of the time

The game opens for some really exciting moments, like when i caught 5 goblins in double Fire cone spells, or when i used Wavering Faith to neuter enemy movement to catch them in AoE, how i went past 4 armor cards of an Iron Golem, or how i finished an enemy off with Unholy Frenzy. Everything is wrapped up in a nice, cheery narrative experience (I already hate Melvin, for instance).

The item looting is also just as i expected it to be, even if it seems slightly dissapointing in lower levels. The fact that i have 4 duplicates of 3 different items already feels slightly annoying, and i believe there should be a little more variety on the most basic of items just to give you some space to toy aroudn as you begin the game. The multiplayer experience I´m not touching yet. I´m not going to buy starter packs since i´d rather learn the game, get familiar with all my equipment and mold my own dream team rather than utilizing presets that i´ve not invested in. I´m not ostracizing Multiplayer, this is just a personal standpoint and thus i will see how far you can go without the multiplayer loot since i want my ascension to MP to feel organic.

In all, i´m going to get home in about an hour and keep rolling dice, until then, keep up with the outstanding work

 

Haven't read what anyone else has said about this game here or anywhere else (as requested), so I apologize if this is terribly redundant.

After receiving my beta email I played for about an hour. Here are my first impressions:

The art style and general tone of the game is charming.

Some of the UI elements seem smaller than they need to be, and others much larger (at least at 1920x1200). The cards in my hand are smaller than the images of the characters next to them. The little coat of arms under the pass button with the turn status on it is bigger than any other individual element on the entire screen despite most of it being purely aesthetic; why not integrate the pass button in to the coat of arms near the bottom? The pass button and numerous other buttons of similar appearance seem to have alignment issues, such as the send button on the chat window overflowing the frame and the pass button not being horizontally aligned.

The initial tutorial segment where you play higher level characters seems counter-productive. I'm guessing the idea is both to quickly engage the player and to also show them the goal they are working towards, but the cards in those initial fights (at least the ones I drew) seemed to be functionally identical to the ones I had a few minutes later at level one spare having higher numbers. This gives the (hopefully mistaken) impression that this game is rather shallow and that I'll still be using the same limited set of abilities forever. I understand this is a tutorial, so throwing mechanically complicated cards at the player isn't a great idea, but there is likely some better way to go about this.

That is a lot more negative words than positive ones, but the game seems quite promising for a beta.

 

Great game people! I love the look and feel overall (I'm and old school pen and paper rpg-er from way back) especially the way the cards are connected to the items. Normally games claiming CCG like gameplay have the rpg bits 'tacked' on and are there mostly for flavor, there's a real sense that no one aspect (cards, random number generation or story goals) is the 'actual game' (if you take my meaning); everything flows. I know it's kinda lame to bring up now (Beta and all) but I'd love to see the backgrounds embellished to a greater degree (more table top clutter, random cola spills on the map, that sort of thing). What about foxing and/or wear on the 'paper' bits as you level? I also enjoy the strategy built in to things like the movement cards and line-of-sight rules. I haven't played any multiplayer yet, but hope you have (or have plans for) large engagements (several players at a time). And rogues! It would be great if you'd take pains to make that fourth archetype a viable, impactful class. It would be cool if we could recruit characters to a stable we have at our Keeps, so one could switch out party members at will (perhaps that's how it works now, but the feeling I got during the tutorial was if you let a party member go to recruit someone else, you lost the first entirely). Anyway looking forward to having a good look around; daddy likes his loot!

 

am I just not seeing a battle log? or the ability to see a more detailed account of the action; is that what you mean? I agree with having more detail of the blow-by-blow-by-effect.

 

I got my key this morning and have been playing on and off all day, so you're obviously doing something right.

Initial impressions are that the game is very appealing, both visually and thematically. I'd be surprised if any D&D veteran weren't drawn in from the start with all the little references and jokes. A lot of care seems to have gone into it.

Some aspects of the UI are a little fiddly. A particular problem is moving around on the strategic map if the desired destination is off screen. It does not appear possible to scroll the map, so you have to travel in jumps. Also, the battle map's corners can get obscured when playing in windowed mode.

The biggest thing that jumps out at me now is that treasure seems to have no use except to sell for gold. It may as well be found in gold form. This seems especially odd regarding the White Star Diamond; it's the culmination of two linked adventures, yet the only thing to do with it is sell it for 10 gold, less than half of what it costs to buy a blunt sword.

Overall, nice work so far

 

The left mouse button on your mouse is the solution to all your problems, try drag the map

 

Got my key last night and have been playing a bit today. Overall, pretty good. The game is interesting and plays pretty well for the most part except in a few instances.

The difficulty for a single battle can range from easy to super difficult without changing your inventory or any tactics. Since the characters draw their moves from a deck it's just luck of the draw for what you get. Sometimes you get good draws, sometimes bad. In my experience so far, my party characters has been pretty even. The monsters however are a different story. Sometimes in a battle a single monster will draw 3 or 4 armors that they keep.

This battle I'm playing, this one Bronze Golem has all 4 of his Thickened Mail. So it has 4 chances to block 4 damage on every attack and it has had those armors from very early in this match. In a different battle it went similarly as this, then when I retried the battle the monster only got 1 and I was able to beat it easily with no changes. It just feels a little wonky.

 

i've just gone through the initial tutorial (i haven't yet attempted multiplayer), but it's been great fun since the very beginning and i'm pleased with almost everything!

one thing i do find a bit weird is that sometimes when i click on a card accidentally i can put it back, and sometimes i'm committed to it. if i make a mistake when selecting a card to play i feel i should always be able to change my mind until i've played it.