My participation in the beta has come to an end. All thanks to Wozarg who allowed me to play on his account for a limited time. I would like to try and summarize my beta impressions as well as few suggestions and findings. This post might be very long, you have been warned. Without further ado – let’s start! PART I: Introduction During my adventures I was able to get level 16 with my party and do all adventures (although 3 of them have been done with Wozarg’s main party). I started playing with 3 new characters I have bought in level 1 tavern. I decided to play with a dwarven warrior and 2 dwarven mages. On level 10 I have bought a dwarven cleric in level 10 tavern and continued with priest instead of a warrior for the rest of my trip. PART II: Few words on game impression, progress and enjoyment The graphics are really good, the sounds are truly enjoyable and my joy of playing the game was steadily increasing, which I found the most amusing! Adventure maps are designed in a really nice fashion and you get to face a different challenges on each one. Sometimes you have to be sneaky and use line of sight to its fullest benefits in order to have ‘an easier time’, another time you have to take a full approach against the enemy and yet another time you will want to be defensive as much as possible, unleashing defensive skills before the real threat is able to do its job. In the early parts of my adventures I used only the gear I acquired in my travels, although later on there were simply too many items to keep the track of which I found myself and which were already found by Wozarg. I was amazed that during my leveling up curve all adventures felt like increase (sometimes it was decrease) in difficulty and as new enemies are introduced I was learning more and more about the game and possible tactics to use against said enemies. I used to do only appropriate level adventures – one by one, level 1 adventures on level 1, level 2 adventures on level 2 and so on. The spike in difficulty (or as I would say it – need of an armor and a little bit of luck to draw it) happened in Diamonds of the Kobolds. This was one and only adventure where I have used 3 re-tries and had to enter the dungeon once again to give it another try. I decided that I will not post the list of my currently equipped items on my characters as I used to change items pretty much every 2nd map. Most of the time 1st map of each adventure served me as ‘see what you are gonna fight against and gear up properly for the next ones’. The amount of items and possible options as well as different cards and all of their uses – that is what makes this game so amazing! You have lots of options and it is up to you how you use it to your advantage. PART III: On creatures and their intelligence The creatures intelligence and their cleverness and their fake moves… this was rather shocking for me! The AI is really, really well designed and deserve more than a medal, extra pizza for them! Some creatures are unpredictable with their fake moves, observing how AI works is one of keys to victory when it comes to singe player. The amount of different creatures and their decks was truly enjoyable! For each creature type there are different best counters, each mob has their own weaknesses and strong sides. During my adventures I found clerics enemies (lizardmen, human and most likely there were more – I just simply forgot) to be more helpful for myself than a threat – their abilities most of the time weren not affecting me or doing anything enough painful to simply ignore them and let them cast their own spells while I get the extra chance to unsleash my cards or pass for 1st move during my next turn. When it comes to favourite enemies my vote would go to goblins and man at arms (parry only) – I truly loved that they have a nice amount of block cards, not many enemies do that as efficiently as they did. PART IV: Suggestions Minor issues & solution suggestions: 1) Premium adventures - no persistent indication that they are any different than normal adventure. I was told that they have the golden circle around them when you unlock them. Solution: Keep the golden circle around them even after beating it once? Another idea would be a different icon, flag or text colour on map to easily distinguish them. 2) Inventory – when you have access to a lot of items it easily gets messy. Solution: One item with a number of how many items of that type you own would help a lot when you have many copies of the same item – it would be much cleaner. When searching for specific item and I type text so I will find all items containing the typed text the text does not get removed if I would target another item slot afterwards (let’s say from arcane item to armor). 3) Characters selection – when you have many characters it takes forever to find the one you are looking for. Solution: Filters for level / alphabetical / ‘text box’ (just like in inventory) would help. PART V: Thank You! All thanks go to Blue Manchu for this outstanding game and insanely well thought out ideas, designs and fun it brought to me. I would like to thank Wozarg as well, for letting me use his account and share some amazing moments together! I am glad I had a chance to express myself and try my best at impressions thread, this is my first time doing ever so it was rather hard but I have enjoyed writing it! Best Regards, Gabbek the Slacker
Edit: due to time consuming process of thinking Deckbuilding post will arrive on saturday, sorry for inconvenience.
Thanks for sharing. I am especially happy that the AI is good! AI being bad or, worse, cheating to compensate for that has spoiled many a strategy game for me.
