BREAKING NEWS: Expanded impressions - this game isn't half-bad!

[Llyranor]

According to Steam, I've played about 17 hrs, and I think I'm at the final battle (or one of the final battles). PC version, hardest diff, 3p co-op (mix of online + local; 2 players can play from one PC if you have 2 gamepads).

 

With the gamepad, controls are spot-on. I played the demo with keyboard, and it was kind of awkward. They work really well with the 360pad.

 

Negatives:

- Story/characters: What happened, Obsidian? What happened, Ziets?

- Loot: Don't play this if you're solely looking for a loot game with interesting unique items.

- Camera: You can't move too far away from other players. This has gotten us in trouble many times. You learn to live with it, and it's not a game-breaker, but still an annoying issue.

 

Neutral:

- Main menu music is nice. I don't remember the rest of the music. I think it's ambiant.

 

Positives:

- Engine/graphics: Fantastic! Looks good, runs smoothly, seamless world with no loading. You couldn't tell this is an Obsidian game. Very promising for future games on the Onyx engine.

- Gameplay: Very enjoyable, and works wonderfully well as a co-op action RPG. As an action game, I find it more dynamic and involving than many other action RPGs. As an RPG, the RPG system is decent enough and allows you to make some interesting choices re: how you customize some of your abilities (not extremely deep, however).

 

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I'll just describe a sample battle (one of my favorite ones from the game - I've kept the specifics vague so that there are no story spoilers at all):

 

You're trapped in an arena-like environment, where enemies can enter the battlefield from every direction. There's one big strong slow-moving boss; you need to kill this guy to trigger the next sequence in the battle. He's assisted with some shield-wielding knights; also somewhat slow but with good hp. There are also a bunch of fast-moving ninjas that do good damage if you get caught up in their attacks. The knights and ninjas keep respawning until the boss is taken out (yeah, I know, infinite respawns - but I find it works really well in this scenario). Meanwhile, there is another boss in the background (which you can't harm yet) raining down projectiles and area spells (but with good visual and audio cues so that they aren't cheap).

 

You're constantly overwhelmed by the incoming enemies trying to rush you, dodging around, building up your focus with regular attacks when you can fit them in (to use your abilities), unleashing your stronger abilities to try to reduce their numbers, while also focusing on damaging the boss so as to not just get overwhelmed by eventual attrition. The dynamic system allows you to stay in the fight even when against very bad odds. You can revive your allies if you can spare the 2 secs it requires (I've found you can cut down that time if you roll just as you start the revive animation - not sure if it's actually implemented animation-cancel, or just overlooked programming), and normal attacks building up focus means you never run out of 'mana'.

 

There's also Rage which you build up by doing damage, which allows you access to other support abilities such as healing (as long as you deal enough damage, you can keep healing, so you don't run out of healing 'items'). You don't just heal instantly, but rather regen 50% of your hp over 30 secs. This means this isn't just an instant win key, but you still need to keep on your toes and evade attacks while your hp is slowly going up; I quite like this. You also use Rage to Empower your normal abilities; this can have various different effects, such as boosts affecting the entire party instead of just one character, or a single high-powered sniper shot spreading into a wave of 5. It's a nice balance of using your Rage abilities (incl. healing), and empowering your other abilities (since Rage doesn't build up that fast).

 

So you're in this tough fight (the difficulty level makes all the difference, I think; wouldn't nearly be as enjoyable if it were easy) where various kinds of enemies are trying to overwhelm you. You dodge around, building up and trying to efficiently manage Focus and Rage. The fighter is trying to deal with crowd control, using dashing abilities and wave attacks to get enemies out of the way. The mage is lobbing fireballs, summoning minions, and casting area spells to support the team.

 

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I was the sniper. Here's a quick rundown of how the mechanics work in this particularly case. I'll distill it down to what's relevant for this battle. I have a high-powered shot while deals about 90% damage to the ninjas. So, one normal shot + one high-powered would take one out. It takes me 2 normal shots to gain enough focus to get one high-powered. This is my main damage dealer. I've customized the high-powered shot ability to give me some focus back when I kill someone with it. Another one of my abilities is a curse that makes the target receive more critical hits. As I didn't require crits to be able to kill the ninjas, I reserved this one mainly on the boss/knights. Another abilities is a machinegun-ish attack. Grounds me in one place, and will keep shooting until I release the button or run out of focus. I've customized it so that it pushes enemies back and slows them down. This was great at pushing the enemy back when overwhelmed, and built up Rage fairly quick, but would drain my focus really fast. Another support ability was summoning a hound that would help distract enemies; and customized so as to heal me when it dealt damage; summoning it took 3-4 secs, though, which was very dangerous, and also meant I wasn't actively killing things in that time.

 

For my rage abilities, healing/regen was my main one. I also have one that grants me 30 secs of increased damage, which I would try to keep on at all times if possible. Lastly, I would use rage for my Empowered high-powered shots, which would shoot out 5 in a spread instead of just one. That costs 2 rage orbs; healing and the other ability cost me one; I had 4 in total.

 

So I would need to build up rage with my MG attack, which required focus that was gained via normal attacks (with the occasional high-powered shot to still maintain good killing potential, as I was the main DPS char in the team), and unleash empowered high-powered shots which would really help clear out the arena when we were overwhelmed, all while reserving some rage for healing as well. Between actively managing the various types of energies, trying to rack up as many kills as I could to give my team some breathing space, and also trying to damage the boss at the same time (otherwise, we would gain no progress), while avoiding all the ninjas chasing us, making sure not to get in range of the knights or the boss, and paying attention to the cues that the other boss in the background was throwing stuff at us - it all made for a very dynamic exciting battle. It definitely got the action part of the combat right. And given that the RPG elements allowed me to custom-tailor my character in this specific way, the RPG system works nicely enough.

 

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(Sorry for the wall)

 

I'm quite enjoying this game. Very fun co-op action RPG, with good combat. No more, no less. It's not a loot game, and doesn't focus on story/characters/writing at all.

[C2B]

- Story/characters: What happened, Obsidian? What happened, Ziets?

 

Nothing, the games just as good as other Obsidian Games and at least superior to NWN2/SOZ. And thats pretty objectivly so. It doesn't focus as much on it. Thats true. But the quality of the writing itself was good.

 

Its also pretty hypocretical since sooooo many people ranted against Cesars Legion/Cesar regarding the "greyness" of the charachters. Jeyne on the other hand is in a perfectly grey area and completly avoids the moustache twirling stereotype. Probably as one of the first main antagonists in video gaming ever.

 

Edit: To be fair though. Except for some brilliant moments the Dialog itself was pretty standard and didn't stand out that much.

Edited August 22, 2011 by C2B

[Ghost1777]

Enjoyed your "review" of the game. Gives a good impression of what to expect. So far I think Lucas is the most fun to play. Can always be in the action and has many active skills to use.

[spamslots]

I just finished it and although the gameplay (with a gamepad and an x-box controller emulator) is fun enough, I feel totally robbed. The game was obviously rushed through production. There is so little content, it's laughable. I finished a hardcore run and if you look at the hours played on the save file I finished it in 10 hours and that was WITH about an hour and a half of time-wasting grinding to be a little higher level so screwing up in boss fights does not mean I'm almost dead from 2 boss hits.

 

There are few character models for everything, there aren't enough quests, the loot does not affect the look enough, the dungeons and environments are too small... It's not like it's a finely crafted gem of a game that's got an exquisite few hours of playtime either.

 

You could finish the game in 8 hours even with doing all the quests. Actually, if you skip the side-quests and just have the skill to time your dodges and blocks in boss fights, you could probably finish it in 6 hours. TOTALLY NOT WORTH THE PRICE.

 

I don't understand why so many people complain about the interface. It's designed for a console, so you need a gamepad. I read the reviews and knew what to expect regarding the gameplay.

 

What really ticks me off is that nobody mentioned how FREAKING SHORT DS III is. I paid $50 for it and a playthrough only takes 10 hours or less? There are tons of $20 games with better gameplay and vastly more content. Fine, my total time played is longer because I experimented with the different characters, but there is NO WAY a modern rpg (even an action rpg) priced at $40-50 should have so few things to do, places to see, and monsters to kill.

 

I generally like Obsidian's work too, so I find DSIII to be staggeringly light on content. It could have been an awesome game. It needed some character specific quests so that your dialog choices with the companions matter. It needed more than just TWO towns. It needed more than 3 quests in town one and 10 in town two. It needed more character models for monsters and more designs for player loot. It needed to be at LEAST 25-35 hours playthrough to deserve a $50 pricetag.

 

As it is now, it's fun enough, but there's just not enough IN it. It should be a $15 game at best.

[SirPetrakus]

I really liked the story and writing. Yeah, maybe the loot could be a tad more varied, but it wasn't half bad. What really blew me away, though, was Stonebridge. I spent an hour just taking in the site of it. I couldn't believe how amazingly beautiful that place looked. Reminded me something out of Arcanum, but with far superior art style. Arcanum on the Onyx engine ... ah, a man can dream.

 

Playing it on hardcore with Reinhart, at the moment and I'm well past 20 hours on this playthrough. That Rajani ... must have taken me a whole afternoon to beat. Goddamn that confined space! Although I do have the 'misfortune' to play it with a KB&M, sine I gave my 360 controller to my brother ...

 

The customization may be considerably lessened compared to DS2, but I like 3 better so far.