Dark Alliance (Drizzt and co in Icewind Dale)
- Thread starter j00t
- Start date
j00t
Silver Baronet of the Realm
- 7,380
- 7,471
j00t
Silver Baronet of the Realm
- 7,380
- 7,471
probably because i'm the only one who isn't speaking in hyperbole. but i get your point. so who WERE you talking about?
- 1
- 1,283
- 3,428
Watched that guys stream, based on that the game doesn't look nearly as bad as the earlier video posted. Certainly not a game of the year, but playable, if you love dnd stuff seems worth a Game Pass price to check it out.
j00t
Silver Baronet of the Realm
- 7,380
- 7,471
yeah, that was basically my thought. the first review posted here obviously has some irritating glitches and AI/network issues that need to be addressed ASAP... but i also sort of looked at it like the dynasty warriors games. like, they are simple, repetitive, uninspired games but they scratch a certain itch.
Ritley
Karazhan Raider
- 15,712
- 34,228
What do you mean worst trailer of all timeYou would have if you scrolled up ~15 posts!
You're right though, all the signs were there from the very beginning. Unknown dev, WOTC self-publishing, initial reveal was one of the worst trailers of all time, etc.
- 2
popsicledeath
Potato del Grande
- 7,421
- 11,625
Archers just need to parry to get stamina back? Great game design.
- 2
Nirgon
YOU HAVE NO POWER HERE
- 12,704
- 19,586
It's pretty fun tbh, kinda like Gauntlet meets Dark Souls with the lock on and parrying. I don't think the controls are bad but you cant rapidly spin in place, or run and jump and spin and throw frost bolts and lock dots. So, ya know. Gonna rustle some people.
The legend of Nigron Do'Urden begins [sic].
The legend of Nigron Do'Urden begins [sic].
Qhue
Trump's Staff
- 7,476
- 4,420
The balance is all over the map in terms of damage and such. Mobs either hit you for essentially no damage whatsoever, or you lose half your health bar in one swing from trash.
I ran the first zone on Wulgar and then went back into that same area on level 2 (after equipping a full suit of level 1 gear and buying a couple of moves) and the Ogres are just insanely powerful. Its not even remotely fun to constantly dodge and have to check both ways to see if theres any oncoming traffic before you dare start an attack sequence. The slightest nudge will interrupt your attack and take a considerable chunk of your life.
I ran the first zone on Wulgar and then went back into that same area on level 2 (after equipping a full suit of level 1 gear and buying a couple of moves) and the Ogres are just insanely powerful. Its not even remotely fun to constantly dodge and have to check both ways to see if theres any oncoming traffic before you dare start an attack sequence. The slightest nudge will interrupt your attack and take a considerable chunk of your life.
- 1
Xerge
<Donor>
- 1,313
- 1,244
I stayed up and did a mission when it unlocked. I honestly had fun, kinda figured the reviews were bull shit. Bugs? oh yeah. A lil clunky until you sorta click with a character? I think so. This game isn't awful if you're a dnd fan, and I will fire it up again anyway.
Plus...game pass.
Plus...game pass.
Nirgon
YOU HAVE NO POWER HERE
- 12,704
- 19,586
If you spam attack those ogres they will fuck u good. The dodging sideways vs backwards and reading them is important.
Someone doing the short back hop from the ogre spear lunge is an oof.
The one video is the guy crying about not being able to exploit range attacking as much as he wanted to.
Someone doing the short back hop from the ogre spear lunge is an oof.
The one video is the guy crying about not being able to exploit range attacking as much as he wanted to.
Phazael
Confirmed Beta Shitlord, Fat Bastard
- 14,107
- 30,197
Many games of this genre offer couch coop. The recent warhammer ones did, Don't Starve, and some other remakes do (Dragons Crown, Secret of Mana, ect), as an example. ITs just tripple A titles want sales numbers and there is no money in spending the effort to make a decent couch play experience when you can make everyone buy their own copy. This is the wrong genre for that mentality, though. Problem I am seeing is that their camera system and collision detection is so assinine that it probably can't be done as couch coop. And I think the characters are mostly too dull for this to work as something that everyone will buy their own copy of. I think this one is going to be hard pass for me based on what I am seeing.
popsicledeath
Potato del Grande
- 7,421
- 11,625
It's like they designed this game from the ground up to be a shitty console port in an era when a game like this would feasibly be played on controllers even on PC.
The controls/movement in this game remind me of a claw-toy machine I used once that had two joysticks, one for forward-back, one for side-to-side. Only problem is it didn't go diagonal if you used both joysticks at once, it just stuttered and seized. At some point somebody designing that machine should have asked why not just have one joystick if you can't even use both at the same time, right?
Why have left-stick movement in permanent strafe mode, basically, requiring constant camera corrections with the right stick to 'aim' your direction running in the world and attacks. Especially when button presses are require for two of the three timing dependent actions, dodge and empowered strike (I think it's called, the one you have to hit right after an attack, that if you're hovering to hit the button you aren't aiming your attack well enough and will miss). But your thumb needs to be on the right stick 'aiming' your character for basic strikes because there isn't auto-target. And of course when you've manually target locked the game, it's also zoomed in shit.
I'm pretty sure at some point they had attacks on buttons and wanted a 'meaningful' aim-target style action combat like shit MMOs kept trying to do where you have to aim heals, and it wasn't working because testers said: "you know, having to use both sticks to control movement really makes it hard to aim attacks using the buttons. Solution: move the attacks and parry and dodge to trigger/finger buttons! Yeah, wait, but I'm used to zoom-in-aim being left trigger in shooters... Okay, leave that one left trigger! Great! Then later they added timed empowered strikes and dodge and now they just had too many buttons and not enough thumbs.
Why didn't they just make controlling your character all left stick, with occasionally right stick camera looking, like is pretty much standard for console/controller games these days that require 3 timed reaction inputs?
Why did they design movement such that it makes me think the dev team all play with controllers like and old person using their fingers instead of thumbs.
The aim for attacks not using target lock seems to suck, with a lot of attacks missing, or with animations that take you past the targets. Why not focus on a serviceable auto-target system, or at least a target-lock system that isn't zoomed in shit?
Actually, ignore all that, one of the shills just answer me this: Why the fuck have one part of the camp a 'map' where you select where you want to go, and then you have to run to another part of the camp to then auto-teleport to that location? Why? Muh immersion?? Can't have players just click a map and load, people will be confused because their character didn't run out of camp... so let's just have them run to a weird teleport pad. Worst of both worlds! It's not even like it LOOKS like you're running out of camp. It's literally you look at a map in one part of camp, select where you want to be auto-teleported to, and then for no reason the game makes you pointlessly run a little just cuz to get to where you're auto-teleported.
Could not a single member of the dev team come up with a better solution than select your auto-teleport location on one UI screen at one part of camp, then run across camp to actually auto-teleport? Nobody said 'why don't we just let people load from the map screen? Nobody said, why don't we at least make it look like you're running out of camp, and the background environment of where you run to load will change based on what region you selected on the map (the selected on the map and loading zone needing to be separate to load the background). Nobody said anything at at all to a system where you run to one part of the camp, click on something to pull up a map, click on the region of the map you want to go to, exit the map, run to another section of the camp to a spot where you just auto-load your mission from there? Not one dev was like 'this is pointless and doesn't add anything fun or interesting at all.
See also, you load the first mission, run in a weird, walled area (so only one way to run) approaching where the game/map obviously starts, then the game pauses, sorta loads again or at least just pauses to show you tutorial/tips/hints (even after you just did the tutorial), and then when you exit out of those, you run a little more to finally enter where the 'map' obviously begins. WHY!? Not one dev had a different solution to THAT? Why not just have loading screen tips on the loading screen? Nah, games load to fast now days. Why not just while it loads, have tips that it doesn't finish loading until they cycle through the tips? NAH! Lets have them load to a pre-area, run, then re-load the hints/tips, then when they cycle through those they can run more into the actual map area! BRILLIANT!
Let me guess, the only best response is "it's not that far to run" from people who are in co-dependent abusive relationships with bad game design. Hi,
Nirgon
The controls/movement in this game remind me of a claw-toy machine I used once that had two joysticks, one for forward-back, one for side-to-side. Only problem is it didn't go diagonal if you used both joysticks at once, it just stuttered and seized. At some point somebody designing that machine should have asked why not just have one joystick if you can't even use both at the same time, right?
Why have left-stick movement in permanent strafe mode, basically, requiring constant camera corrections with the right stick to 'aim' your direction running in the world and attacks. Especially when button presses are require for two of the three timing dependent actions, dodge and empowered strike (I think it's called, the one you have to hit right after an attack, that if you're hovering to hit the button you aren't aiming your attack well enough and will miss). But your thumb needs to be on the right stick 'aiming' your character for basic strikes because there isn't auto-target. And of course when you've manually target locked the game, it's also zoomed in shit.
I'm pretty sure at some point they had attacks on buttons and wanted a 'meaningful' aim-target style action combat like shit MMOs kept trying to do where you have to aim heals, and it wasn't working because testers said: "you know, having to use both sticks to control movement really makes it hard to aim attacks using the buttons. Solution: move the attacks and parry and dodge to trigger/finger buttons! Yeah, wait, but I'm used to zoom-in-aim being left trigger in shooters... Okay, leave that one left trigger! Great! Then later they added timed empowered strikes and dodge and now they just had too many buttons and not enough thumbs.
Why didn't they just make controlling your character all left stick, with occasionally right stick camera looking, like is pretty much standard for console/controller games these days that require 3 timed reaction inputs?
Why did they design movement such that it makes me think the dev team all play with controllers like and old person using their fingers instead of thumbs.
The aim for attacks not using target lock seems to suck, with a lot of attacks missing, or with animations that take you past the targets. Why not focus on a serviceable auto-target system, or at least a target-lock system that isn't zoomed in shit?
Actually, ignore all that, one of the shills just answer me this: Why the fuck have one part of the camp a 'map' where you select where you want to go, and then you have to run to another part of the camp to then auto-teleport to that location? Why? Muh immersion?? Can't have players just click a map and load, people will be confused because their character didn't run out of camp... so let's just have them run to a weird teleport pad. Worst of both worlds! It's not even like it LOOKS like you're running out of camp. It's literally you look at a map in one part of camp, select where you want to be auto-teleported to, and then for no reason the game makes you pointlessly run a little just cuz to get to where you're auto-teleported.
Could not a single member of the dev team come up with a better solution than select your auto-teleport location on one UI screen at one part of camp, then run across camp to actually auto-teleport? Nobody said 'why don't we just let people load from the map screen? Nobody said, why don't we at least make it look like you're running out of camp, and the background environment of where you run to load will change based on what region you selected on the map (the selected on the map and loading zone needing to be separate to load the background). Nobody said anything at at all to a system where you run to one part of the camp, click on something to pull up a map, click on the region of the map you want to go to, exit the map, run to another section of the camp to a spot where you just auto-load your mission from there? Not one dev was like 'this is pointless and doesn't add anything fun or interesting at all.
See also, you load the first mission, run in a weird, walled area (so only one way to run) approaching where the game/map obviously starts, then the game pauses, sorta loads again or at least just pauses to show you tutorial/tips/hints (even after you just did the tutorial), and then when you exit out of those, you run a little more to finally enter where the 'map' obviously begins. WHY!? Not one dev had a different solution to THAT? Why not just have loading screen tips on the loading screen? Nah, games load to fast now days. Why not just while it loads, have tips that it doesn't finish loading until they cycle through the tips? NAH! Lets have them load to a pre-area, run, then re-load the hints/tips, then when they cycle through those they can run more into the actual map area! BRILLIANT!
Let me guess, the only best response is "it's not that far to run" from people who are in co-dependent abusive relationships with bad game design. Hi,
Nirgon- 3
- 1
- 1,283
- 3,428
I'm not defending the game here, but I think this sort of system is in line where devs want that sort of Monster Hunter feeling. You get a quest from a quest giver. Then you can "prepare for adventure" doing whatever the fuck, eating food, doing jumping-jacks, then go to the gather spot to launch the mission. Would it have been simpler in MH to just go to one spot, get your quest and launch right into game same spot? Yea, but shrug...it probably has to do with some concept of multi-player they originally wanted but never fully realized.
- 2
j00t
Silver Baronet of the Realm
- 7,380
- 7,471
it's not a perfect game by any stretch and i don't think anyone could even jokingly argue that. i played a level with drizzt and had a good time. it's a very similar kind of thing to gauntlet in that the game is FAIRLY simplistic and repetitive (though it seems this game has some decent progression?) but gains a SIGNIFICANT amount of value when played with friends.
as far as the map goes, yeah i don't know why it's done that way. i GUESS it's done with multiplayer in mind. one person can pick a map while the other 3 can still do shopping or whatnot. when it comes to people being "confused" about how to proceed... i mean the game specifically tells you HOW to start it. "Go to the map" and then puts a big marker on it. then tells you which map to pick, and then tells you where to go with a big marker on it.
i'm all for QoL issues, but if you're argument is that "people might be confused" then i just don't know, man. i mean, we all complain when games hold your hand ad nauseum because it's insulting, but then when the game gives you a connect the dots marker you get angry for how confusing it is?
as far as the map goes, yeah i don't know why it's done that way. i GUESS it's done with multiplayer in mind. one person can pick a map while the other 3 can still do shopping or whatnot. when it comes to people being "confused" about how to proceed... i mean the game specifically tells you HOW to start it. "Go to the map" and then puts a big marker on it. then tells you which map to pick, and then tells you where to go with a big marker on it.
i'm all for QoL issues, but if you're argument is that "people might be confused" then i just don't know, man. i mean, we all complain when games hold your hand ad nauseum because it's insulting, but then when the game gives you a connect the dots marker you get angry for how confusing it is?
- 1
popsicledeath
Potato del Grande
- 7,421
- 11,625
Yes, half baked, incomplete, with inexplicable design 'decisions' left in the game. Glad we agree, fren.
Even still, in Monster Hunter I thought I remember you just loaded/clicked a UI button when you were ready. I don't remember running to a vacant, pointless spot in camp to 'load' the mission, but only played it for a few missions.
popsicledeath
Potato del Grande
- 7,421
- 11,625
Yes, this is how dumb and unintuitive the design is. The game, once you select your mission on the map, gives you connect-the-dot markers to run to the other part of camp to load the mission. They took the time to add in directions to this pointless, poor game design!
I wasn't meaning literally confused, you abused-gamer troglodyte. I meant it sarcastically, as if people are going to be confused if they let you just load from a UI screen or 'ready' button instead of physically running out of camp.
I'm glad you're having fun and defending this game, though. Heed that warning, all.