City of the Shroud

[spoiler] 恭喜你触发隐藏副本「每日 key 刷新点」[url=www.babagame.vip][b][u] 点击前往 [/u][/b] [/url][/spoiler] [h1][quote=「BABAGAME」Unintresrting] 游戏特色分： 这种主题比较新颖，但是操作简单而且不熟悉。 全程游戏以一种故事的模式来战斗，对于这种剧情战斗类游戏我觉得还行 游戏画质分： 我也不知道为什么给那么低的画质分，也不是说它画质太粗糙，就是有绝大部分的 都是比较违和，有的建筑非常古朴，而有的偏现代，具体看图片。 游戏可玩分： 游戏完善，角色多样，剧情配合战斗，可选择性也高，人物也有不同属性可近战，也有远攻，伤害方面还是比较合理的 由于格式原因，完整评测请到[b][url=http://www.babagame.vip/archives/22445]http://www.babagame.vip/archives/22445[/url][/b] [/quote][/h1][b] 感谢 BABAGAME 免费赠送的游戏，现在到 [url=www.babagame.vip] BABA [/url] 回帖有机会免费获得这款游戏 [/b]

Tedious dialogue, no exploration, and a weird combat system that should be turn based, but isnt.

Getting removed from the steam store after this one last sale so if you ever wanted it or u are a collector like me now is the time to pick it up.

It is, to be honest, a bit janky, both in gameplay and the tonal shifts in the writing. However, the combat and RPG mechanics have a surprising depth when you get into it, and I find the overall experience highly enjoyable despite initial stumbling. Moreover, both from the scope of the project and my interactions with the developers, I can tell that this is a game that's driven by a passion to do something different, and you should not rob yourself of the chance to be part of this unique experiment in shared storytelling. Give it a go.

I love this game and have watched it's development with enthusiastic anticipation for over a year. Shroud is a fast-paced, real-time strategy RPG with an unique combo-based attack system that keeps battles fun and fresh. The music is energetic and ear catching, and Moira Katson's dialogue is giggle-inducingly sassy. My absolute favorite part: The story itself is a game mechanic, with aggregate player choices shaping the course of events. It's like Fable or KOTOR, but on a grand scale, with Moira shaping the story based on what *we* do in game. I 100% recommend it.

Story driven games are my bread and butter, and I was incredibly excited diving into City of the Shroud by Abyssal Games, because in reading up on the concept of the game, it seemingly offered me exactly what I’ve been craving for a while now: a tactical, narrative-heavy experience. The more reading, the merrier. The plot focuses on the City of Iskendrun. The player takes the role of a traveler, a newcomer to the metropolitan city, and on their first day manages to defeat a portal beast by accident. The metropolis is under assault from monsters that appear out of dark, magical portals. The player defeating of one of these creatures puts them on the map, and the power players of Iskendrun are eager to have the Hero of the Portals at their disposal. The target of the city’s most influential agents, the player must choose their side and set about saving the city from the monsters plaguing it, but also reshaping Iskendrun in the image of their allied faction—for better or for worse. With five factions vying for power in the city, and you at the center of the plot, the game sets itself up to tell some incredible stories. Now I can’t progress with a critique of the game at large without addressing what is hands down the weakest element of the game itself: the combat. Aspects of it are incredibly fresh; I would be remiss not to mention, for example, the dynamic way the game throws the player into their first encounter, and how effective the game is at breaking down fundamental combat mechanics in a way that makes you feel powerful and engaged. The player moves up to four controllable units across a tile-grid battlefield. When going to attack, a unit will select an enemy in range, and a wheel will pop up, the player can choose different directional inputs in different orders to implement combos that have unique abilities and deal varying amounts of damage. There are a variety of units to choose from, each with their unique combo attacks, overall strengths, and individual weaknesses. This, theoretically at least, leads to massive variation in combat experience, as layout customization demands novel strategies and variant playstyles. The real tragedy then is that in actuality, combat is clunky at best. The real issue with combat is that what looks like rich tactical variety is itself only skin deep. Battle rewards throwing strategy to the wind and just charging at enemies with the highest damage dealing units possible. Planning often backfired because components of combat that were poorly highlighted by the tutorial. A prime example was the regenerating stamina bar used to execute combos. It would slow down or speed up depending on factors that were never clearly explained in tutorials, leaving me confused why I was recharging so slowly or incapable of moving some turns but not others. So, running in headlong with high-damage dealing units and just spamming combos as fast as possible proved to be the most viable strategy. I tried a variety of layouts in the active encounters the player can engage with across the city, and the frailer classes overwhelming proved less useful in higher difficulty fights, which was incredibly disappointing, given how interesting some of weaker the unit types are. Equally frustrating was the enemies in combat itself. Enemy units in the game are all the same as the units the player uses, so every fight feels like a rehashing of a battle you’ve already had. You can only face the same enemies so many times before even seeing them becomes annoying. The portal monsters are themselves no better because they are just reskinned base models, except for a slightly darker theme. What the portal monsters do differently—which is incredibly refreshing—is use new abilities that mix up how you have to engage them. While this is fun, it left me overwhelmingly bored with the basic enemy types. I kept wanting to face enemies I hadn’t seen before or come upon some new challenge that genuinely felt distinct, and it never really happened. Even the first full-fledged boss fight was just a series of waves of rehashed portal monsters that felt entirely uninspired. I was clamoring to face off against something new and scary, or that forced me to operate outside my comfort zone, and the game’s combat never gave me that opportunity. Conversely, a real strength of the game: the art. The game is predominantly 2D, and the art is lovely. The backgrounds are stunning, and the characters are beautiful. I found myself just staring at some of the characters, like the priest you encounter early in the game, Navid, and the Hat Merchant, who drips with mystery. The art goes a long way to ground the story and give you real physical, meaningful engagement with the different characters, as there are clear faces to put with names and people. It’s a little disappointing that some side characters have reused art assets, but its reasonable given the scope of the game. Even then, the art is so fantastic that I can’t help but still find the designs charming. The only possible exception to this is a single old lady design that appears throughout the game that looks something like a cross between E.T. and Yoda wearing a wig. She looks like a grumpy potato. I’d be lying if I said I don’t laugh every time she shows up. She doesn’t decrease my love for the game’s phenomenal art direction, of course, but she’s still so wonky that it’s almost funny. Equally strong are the 3D sections of the game, which do a phenomenal job of utilizing a relatively low-polygon aesthetic to create a consistent game feel. The designs of the fighters, which you will see over and over, are simple but convey the role of each character effectively and intuitively. You know off the bat how each class plays and how to use them by merely looking at them. It makes starting off simple and rewarding. Additionally, as they are so distinct in style, you know immediately what enemies you are facing and what strategies you should implement to challenge different foes based on their weaknesses. Battlefields too are precisely designed, laid out expertly, and styled naturally with the aesthetic of the unit models. This game nails its style. Every component of the artistic direction feels carefully curated, and that is so much to this games credit. The art does a great deal to augment the story. As the game is still in beta, and not fully released at the time of writing this review, I want to see how this mechanic impacts gameplay and what it means for the quality and consistency of the story presented. As of now, however, the game life-cycle isn’t far enough along. But it opens exciting avenues of possibility. My biggest concern now, looking forward to the future of this story, is whether the game will be able to sustain this type of energy. A considerable part of the appeal of the game as it exists right now is the shape and scope of the story and the feeling of full submersion in the world. I can see that faltering with an episodic narrative, as the studio works to keep with story arcs the community pushes forward. If not appropriately tended, what feels like a realized, full world could thin out or worse yet, become less specific and less realized. Moving forward, anybody tracking the game should eagerly monitor how the game develops and how the community of players comes to interact with the game world. I found myself drawn to Zem, the devilish patron of the downtrodden refugees, but the other characters provide gripping and unique paths through the world’s narrative. Watching the player-base interact with these kinds of options will prove, as I see it, a pivotal part of what makes or breaks this game. No matter how it plays out, it will be something in the game to watch moving forward.

I wanted to like this game, but after my fourth fight the game was mainly passive reading with some bad fights thrown in. After four fights I did not see, nor was I intruded with anything remotely looking like an rpg system or a game system. Just passive reading with some lite, really bad combat. Also, there were what I assume to be console references that I did not understand since I am a civilized PC game player playing a game on a computer with civilized input devices and not savage console controllers for low-brow monkey barbarians. I do not appreciate a game insulting me by grouping me in with the controller using savages. I’m not even sure if this application counts as a game. It was 95% passive, no input reading (something that predates games by being known as books), with some really bad, no thinking needed or required combat tacked on for the other five %. I salute Steam’s return policy.

RIP anybody who never got the game and still wants to play it

I started off excited - I really wanted to like this game. Having the player's choices actually affect how the game unfolds is one of the things that game developers have been trying to incorporate as of late: A few really good games on the PS4 come to mind that make good use of these branching outcomes. While this is a slightly different take (your decisions affect the subsequent episode), I did not expect to not be given any decision-making whatsoever in the 1.4 hours that I've played this game .. apart from typing my name, and making decisions on which of the 2 combos to use during the tutorial battles. Granted, I think I was still in the "tutorial phase" somehow, but that brings me to my next point: the dialogue is tedious right from the beginning, and the attempt to "immerse" you in lore off the bat felt slightly jarring. Almost immediately, you're thrown various exposition dialogue on the historical and political setting, how each character is supposed to be, etc. These seem to go on forever. The "quests" you initially do during this tutorial phase involve talking to each of the lead characters of the factions to understand who they are and their motives. However, this felt like mostly forced exposition (read: tedious dialogue above) - the quests are quite literally spelled out as "Talk to xx". Repeat for each and be prepared to read a long dialogue exchange. Combat was sparse and fairly repetitive (at least for the first 1.5 hours that I've played, there are only 2 combos introduced, for a total of 4 across 2 classes), and made me wonder why I needed to do the same maneuvers repeatedly with minimal impact on the outcome. To the developer's credit, I appreciate that this game is an attempt to do something different, and the art was pretty, detailed, and clearly had a lot of effort put into it. But for a game branded as an RPG, I would have expected more overall.