Chronicon: Survivors

100% complete in 27 hours. I had zero crashes, zero bugs and played with consistent 60+fps with no frame drops on my 480. I liked Chronicon a lot and have been addicted to these survivors recently so I'm glad I ignored the negative reviews since I enjoyed this quite a bit for the price.

It pains me to say this as somebody who genuinely loves Chronicon itself, but this game? Unstable, underbaked, poorly balanced, not particularly fun. A terrible use of the assets and IP / setting, crash-prone and buggy, inexpertly coded and optimized. Just a real disappointment through and through. I gave it a second chance, a third chance, and more, and all I got was a general malaise.

I really, really hate to leave a negative review, especially as a major fan of Chronicon. There's no way to pull punches here though - this game sucks. The UI doesn't scale properly at hi-res and makes loads of nonsensical decisions, the controller support is terrible, the combat and upgrades are just not fun. I'm struggling to find a single redeeming quality compared to other games in the survivors/bullet heaven genre and coming up empty. Whereas Chronicon evolved a deep complexity over time, and from early days had a distinct take on ARPGs, this iteration in the universe lacks the same love of the genre it exists within.

I just don't understand how this fails this poorly at being a survivor-like game. Chronicon is a great hack and slash ARPG. With the amount of skills, builds, enemies, items, etc, etc that exist in that game, it should have been an easy port into a survivor. And yet, this isn't very good. A lot of the attacks are functionally worthless. Attacks seem to fall into three categories- targeted, utterly random, or moves in the direction you're moving (or off to the right if you're standing still). Targeted attacks are the best, as they'll usually hit something. Sometimes they'll wiff past an enemy, but most of the time they'll connect. These are the best attacks, as they actually do something. The next are random attacks. These attacks are just random, like a random lighting bolt that is somehow targeting a completely empty section of the screen or a summon that appears at a random place that also is completely empty of enemies. These are terrible and are often wastes of weapon spaces. The last are weapons that target the direction you're moving. In theory I guess they could work, but most of the time you'll be moving [i]away[/i] from a ball of enemies, so a weapon auto-aiming in front of you does nothing. Two out of three weapon types are just worthless, which means your damage (and thus survivabilty) is carried on the back of one or two weapons that are actually doing something. More often than not, this is your starting weapon and the Holy weapon that does AoE damage around you. And that's it. It makes a very boring game where you're just banishing garbage weapons to get the few functional ones. There's also the issue of damage and upgrades. Damage in this game is low, like 10 damage low. Meaning that percent increases aren't going to have a large impact on damage overall. A 10% increase in damage only means an extra point of damage in something with a base 10 damage, which is fine, I guess... BUT, most meta-upgrades are like 1% damage increase. Most of your damage is going to come from upgrades on a run, which are in the 50-100% range. This makes meta-progression feel rather trivial- and makes the first few minutes of a run an absolute slog. Overall, the game is a bit of a mess, which, again, is just insane given how good Chronicon is. How is this so bad? I don't understand. The dev, as far as I'm aware, is either a very small team or just a singular person- and they do seem to be working on this game- but, is this salvageable? This isn't in early access. This is it. And I can't recommend it. Maybe in five years this will be something worth playing, but in five years who's going to be checking on this?

Whole sub-genre needs to just go away at this point. Every indie dev flocking to it for a quick buck.

Очередной клон Vampire Survivors, но, к сожалению, не совсем удачный. У игры проблема с балансом, которая делает из игры про весёлое уничтожение тысяч врагов просто унылый кайт толпы по арене. ⭕ Неплохая графика - локации выглядят опрятно, а монстры неплохо анимированы. Музыка хорошо подошла бы к какому-нибудь крутому шутану про убийство демонов, но и здесь прекрасно вписывается в происходящее. ⭕ Помимо основного дерева глобальной прокачки, есть и святилища, которые прокачиваются в зависимости от ваших побед. Например, помолившись на алтаре молний, в бою вы получите существенную прибавку к заклинаниям этой школы магии. Но без побед - не будет и прогресса в улучшении этих святилищ. ⭕ Много ачивок, которые мотивируют попробовать разные способы выживания. ⭕ Помимо обычного выживания, есть бесконечный режим и режим аномалии, где выше награда и риск “сыграть в ящик” тоже немаленький - нужно убить босса и прыгнуть в портал к следующему боссу и так далее. ❌ Игра наказывает вас за то, что вы получаете мощные заклинания и быстрее убиваете врагов. Все монстры двигаются с большой скоростью и расправившись с пачкой врагов, вы мгновенно получите ещё одну. Это полностью исключает хоть какую-то передышку и сильно мешает при битве с боссами, до которых не добраться из-за постоянного “мясного щита” мелких монстров. ❌ Камера расположена слишком низко. Арены небольшие, да к тому же и с препятствиями. Легко можно зайти в тупик или быть окружёнными внезапно появившимися с юга или севера монстрами. ❌ Все монстры крайне живучие. Даже если вы пойдёте в бой с полностью прокачанными пассивками и святилищем, даже если у вас выпадут хорошие виды заклинаний, монстры всё равно будут умирать неохотно. Забеги длятся по двадцать минут и геймплей с первой минуты — это всегда кайт врагов и увороты от довольно подлого спавна, всегда летящего в лицо. ❌ Почти все виды заклинаний, даже максимально усиленные, наносят мало урона. Более десятка разнообразных спеллов, но для гарантированной победы сгодится только парочка. ❌ Разработчик игры пишет, что лучше не собирать всё подряд, я придумывать сильный билд и следовать ему. Логично, но за поднятие уровня или при подборе сундука дают три рандомных заклинания или пассивки, поэтому собрать задуманное сложно. Реролов нет, но можно забанить что-то ненужное, вот только количество банов ограничено и в конце концов заставляют брать то, что дают. Игре можно было простить многое, но в ней просто не работает геймплейное ядро, которое отвечает за веселье. Часами гриндить золото и прокачиваться, чтобы потом обнаружить, что монстрам, по большому счёту, наплевать на ваши усиления - совсем не весело.

This game DOES NOT deserve a mixed review. It is a solid survivor game with plenty of content available as of 3-17-2025. The differences this game provides compared to similar games are subtle, but very welcomed. -Less emphasis on XP, more gains from killing crown enemies (elites). -Account wide progression with the talent tree system. Overall good game and am looking forward to future updates!

if you love original chronicon and is interested in this game... please think again. It's a horrible copy of survivor genre, there isn't enough dmg upgrade and interesting skills to make up for the difference of scaling. All the characters are horribly balanced. The chakram character is basically what make the game bearable while everyone else feels like you hit enemy with pool noodle after the 5m mark.

Mediocre game in a crowded genre. All runs feel the same, boring upgrades, level ups are weak, character feels like a weak mortal. None of these features are in Chronicon. Something happened to the dev. All of the good ideas in Chronicon are not in this game.

The game starts grindy and slow, down the road once you start earning gold, this game gets easier and easier. The bosses very tanky but thats all, it ain't that hard.