Der Geisterjäger / The Ghost Hunter

There is a really interesting flow to this game, but it takes a while to get into it. Investigating these strange areas requires a careful approach I was not really ready for. It's much more than just moving around a maze and combating enemies. It's almost a detective type game, where you have to look around and uncover clues. Progression is slow, but you will get the hang of it if you are patient. It reminds me of the old RPGs I used to play in the 80s. Again slow progression, not a lot of bells and whistles, but there were a lot of details that could be easy to miss if you are not careful. I also like how the game does not hold your hand and just put everything on the map for you. It makes demands on the player to know what they are doing and to remember stuff. I love this. I strongly dislike what games like Skyrim did to the RPG genre (beautiful as it may be) by taking away the need to understand what you're doing and replacing it with easy to follow map markers. I would not say it is hard, but it requires thought and attention to detail, and this is what I used to love about RPGs.

I honestly don't know how I failed to discover this series before now. Der Geisterjäger is an extremely solid dungeon crawler. It's also extremely hard; difficulty reminds me of older games without the extra tedium of those. It's hard, but fair for the most part. Now, the negatives. Compared to the previous entry in this series, I feel the sheer breadth of upgrade options rather than tactically scattered upgrade modules works out against the game. It's far too easy to upgrade the wrong thing and screw yourself over. Also, the controls are nethack-ish, which is to say there's a learning curve. You really NEED a numpad. I'd recommend this, though. It's a hidden gem. Some tips: * Enable the fixed map option and get some graph paper to draw out a map. Trust me, it'll make your life easier. * The SMG is for close range fights. the AR is for medium range retreat tactics and the rifle is for hitting things that are small and things that are far away. The laser is for things that are weak to lasers. The bazooka is an emergency get-out-of-jail-free card and you should conserve all the bazooka ammo until you really need it. * Generally speaking, suit upgrades are inferior to weapon upgrades. * The shield is far less useful than the previous entry, but it's a good idea to turn it on when you're about to get hit by multiple enemies since it does reduce damage. * If your weapons are out of ammo and you're not in combat, get in the habit of reloading them. * Use the suit battery for the laser if you're close to a repair station. Don't waste the laser clips.

An ode, a love letter to the computer games from the 16-bit era in the early nineties. Titles such as 'Corporation','Infestation', 'Hired Guns' or 'Cybercon III' will pop into your mind from the very depths of your memories. A game to be played in front of your computer while you draw maps of the areas, no matter a minimap is provided (when the time comes, you'll see it's much better to trust in yourself than in technology). A tough game that demands a lot from the player, starting for his time, and encourages him to use his imagination in order to get past his techical aspect and get immersed into his story and lore (more demands). Definitely not a game for someone that yells at first sight when a game "doesn't take his time with the respect it deserves". This time, to close doors behind you won't save you from an enemy that has clearly spot you since enemies can open or even break doors but this is still useful since enemies will have to lose one or more turns so that you'll be able to change to a better weapon, reload your current one or take a better position to shoot. Depending on the situation you can even hide from them. P.D.: "No mouse support", nor needed. Almost everything can be handled via numerical pad of the keyboard. I personally recommend to assign '0' from numerical pad to 'WAIT' action. :P

You know the expression "handling something with kid gloves"? Yeah, Der Geisterjäger does - except its "kid gloves" are boxing gloves with horseshoes in them. Basically, DGJ is a mecha dungeon crawler that not only isn't afraid of being "unfair", but it actually incorporates savescumming as a canonical ability for your main character - something like precognition from Katana Zero, if you will. "This is only a dream" is a sentence that if you, like me, are not a particularly sharp tactical mind, you'll get used to seeing. A lot. "Wait, so is it just hard for the sake of hard?" Not really: it *starts* on a steep learning curve but kinda mellows out over time, as you upgrade your mech and get a feeling for how to coordinate combat stances, firing modes and battery usage for shield, boosters and the new "Pulse" ability (an AOE attack that uses tons of energy). Also, a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ beam saber that works as a "nah i don't actually want to engage you" button. It'll cost a lot to upgrade as the game goes on, but it'll be worth it. If you didn't play the prequel, a very similar game called Der Geisterturm, the process above *will* be harsh, but you'll actually kinda feel like a badass once you'll be able to take three opponents at once thanks to clever positioning and micromanagement. I know I did. Speaking of Der Geisterturm: if you've played that one, expect a game that's like twice as long - because what amounted to the whole game then is only the first "act" now. There's three of them this time: one that follows the previous game's "tower" structure (except you're descending), one that's set in a *very* atmospheric urban environment and one in a 4-floor minidungeon that acts as a hyper-condensed combat gauntlet. For aesthetics reasons my favourite was Act 2, but i didn't dislike any of them - hell, i've had a great time across the board, despite coming out of it with a black eye and a cracked lip sometimes. Oh also, adding on top of the pretty much pristine gameplay loop from Der Geisterturm, Der Geisterjager now has shops, upgrades and an inventory, meaning it's more or less a "real" RPG now. You buy upgrades from the workshops you repair at, you buy ammo, armor and items from the shop terminals. Armor especially has a bit of a double function: you can both apply it to your mech at workshops (preferrably after repairing so you also get more hull durability), or you can put it on while on the field by using a set amount of energy, like some sort of robot medkit. Conserve them. Along with most other items. This game is carefully designed around tactical hoarding. Other miscellaneous additions include a "scan the area" button that costs 10 energy but shows you most of them map, a shotgun (that won't be too great until upgraded imo), a sniper rifle for extreme range combat (i.e. over 4 tiles) and a MUCH appreciated "wait" button for when you need to make enemies walk into your doorside ambushes or when you're cowering in a storage room with like 50 DC (out of, usually, a mininum of 192). Also, a couple remixed tracks from Das Geisterschiff (the first game in the series) and a general improvement in model and environment design. Pro tip: go to "graphics", then "miscellaneous" and turn chromatic aberration on for that authentic "looking at the world through a ♥♥♥♥♥♥ DOS screen" feel. I could also go on about many other artsy things, like how DGJ pretty much does my favourite thing in sci-fi horror (i.e. the aforementioned reliance on ♥♥♥♥ technology to handle high-intensity situations) but i feel waxing too much poetics about a game like this would kinda go against its whole vibe: you're not here on a grand quest, you're here to get the job done. A soldier has no honor, Echo. (Yes, the "suicide" mode is how you leave the game. You blow yourself up. It's funny.)

Der Geisterjager is a lot like Der Geisterturm, but better in every way. More enemy variety, interesting environmental challenges, and new hazards to deal with that aren't mines. Along with quality of life improvements you should expect from continued development. The single most important change is the addition of the credit system, you gain money for killing enemies now and the credits allow you upgrade your RCS as you see fit at repair stations dotted about the dungeons, creating an agency that the previous two games lacked while providing a much greater replay value. The finite resources of the previous two games has also been done away with thanks to the addition of currency as you can now buy more ammo, armor, and whatever else you need at stores often located near the repair stations. It also turns the gameplay on its head as combat is now something to be desired rather than avoided, making it much closer to a traditional DRPG than the previous two titles. Resource management is still important, but now the player has ways of dealing with it if things go south. All in all this is the best game in the series so far.

Dungeon Crawler au tour par tour, dans Der Geisterjäger on ne voit que par les capteurs du notre robot. Et il n’a pas de souris. Seulement un clavier. Après un temps d’adaptation, ça passe, mais ça reste dommage de passer à côté. Le jeu est austère, et difficile. Il faut chercher des indices en vrai sans suivre un gros point d’exclamation sur une carte magique. Je "recommande" seulement pour les joueurs avertis, les autres n’y trouveront qu’un plaisir frustré. Globalement, ce jeu est une amélioration directe du jeu précédent, qui améliorait celui d’avant, sans bouleverser les fondamentaux. J’ai environ 12h sur les trois jeux cumulés, dont je crois 4 heures sur celui-là (le compteur Steam est chelou parfois...). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8rTW5NUl5Pw

[url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/38888018-United-Critics/] Please follow [b]United Critics[/b] for quality reviews[/url] [h1]Good things:[/h1] This is a dungeon crawler game where instead of having a fantasy land and a team you are in a post-apocalypse future in a mech. The year is 2075 and the Earth is a scorched wasteland now and the smartest best educated and most intelligent people just run away with the richest people to colonize some other planet and have a life there while the rest of humanity stayed on Earth that is dying and had to move underground to survive. The Earth now is ruled by 2 corporations that are in endless power struggle and there are some neutral zones that don’t want to have anything to do with any of these corporations. We work for one of the corporations and we go into a neutral zone to look for the squad that went missing as they were chasing an unknown attacker. This game is hard at start and you can die even in prologue during training but that is good as the game require you to think about your tactics and what weapon to use against what enemy and when it is better to use energy for a shield and when it is better to use it to hit with a sword. I also like how there are 6 different weapons beside your energy sword that you can use from the start. I’m more of a fan of fantasy dungeon crawlers where you start with a basic equipment and find better weapons with time like in Legends of Grimrock but here it makes sense that you start with all the weapons on your mech and instead of finding new better weapons you find credits that you spend in special workshop to upgrade your weapons and make them stronger or you find armor plates and upgrade armor of your mech. This is a good loot system that works as well as finding new weapons and armors in other games. I also really liked how there is a DC and a HP value. HP is your health while DC is the health of the mech you are piloting and you need to take care of both and sometimes shots fired get past DC and hit your HP. I also like that there is energy that can be used in a few ways and that depending on your stance you can change your accuracy and evasion values. It is also good that your mech have a weight and you can just use that weight to push enemies and bash them or destroy locked doors and the weight of your mech decides how much damage will enemy suffer from you ramming them. There is also a setting that lets you choose what kind of countermove you want to use if enemy will try to ram you and you will be able to evade it. I also like the graphic as it really makes you feel like you are inside an armored mech and you are looking at the world by the cameras and sensors mounted on the mech instead of just sitting in the mech head and looking out thru the window. It always felt strange to me that in media mechs are represented as these huge walking armors but the pilot is vulnerable because he sits in the head and looks everywhere using a window. Here I fell more like I’m siting somewhere deep inside the mech chest and I see the world outside only thanks to cameras and sensors mounted on the mech and for me it is a fresh felling of really being a well protected pilot in a powerful mech that is really using all the technology and does not have a weak point on the front of his mech. [h1]Bad things:[/h1] There were 2 things I didn’t like. One from playing perspective and one from a logic of the presented world perspective. From playing perspective I got problem with respawning enemies as they can just suddenly spawn behind your backs even when you just walked on that spot 2 seconds ago and there was no one there and I’m sure that a guy in big mech would notice a big robot spider or a flying robot or any other type of enemy as you can’t stand on the same spot as enemy because of how huge you and enemies are. Also it means that you can’t just clear any room and be sure that anywhere is safe but for me it is important to clear dungeons in a dungeon crawler game. I just like to be sure I looted everything and killed all enemies on each level. It is also good to know that there are safe places that you cleared out so you can go back down to that places to make sure you picked up everything or to back to them slowly while strong enemies are chasing you so you can be sure to fight them from a good position and in the right place. Enemy that suddenly spawns behind you while you have walls on your right and left side and enemy in from of you can be a real problem. From logic perspective I can’t understand why they would give you a mech with much better armor for a training mission but give you much worse one for a combat mission but still would give you all the weapons and why would any corporation send just one lonely soldier in mech to a place where they lost contact with whole squad of soldiers in mechs – that just does not make any sense. If you lost a contact with a whole squad of soldiers you send a few more squads to secure the area and find the lost team not just one single guy with some basic training. [h1]Conclusion[/h1] All in all this game has many good moving parts and some bad ones that create the whole experience. Overall score 6.5/10

this game is really fun and is... oddly creepy. the environment randomly shaking from earthquakes, sometimes not knowing where enemies are in comparison to you, it's definitly something I still need to finish but I really love it so farand just how well a mecha dungeon crawler works.

Another good dungeon crawler. Love the setting and lore. Combat is on point, but make sure to find the healing/repair area quick! Happy to have the automap. Mapping is fun, but hard when I'm playing on the couch. Played a lot of the demo and need to get back to full game now!

DGJ is a good old school indie dungeon crawler with sci-fi theme. It's quite challenging game - it won't let you roam careless with crazy builds. In most cases you need to carefully plan your fights, often rotate weapons depending on what enemy faces you. Sort of like in Doom, but dungeon crawl style. I find joy in such approach, especially when you make through the level. One warning though, make sure you loot/check every newly discovered room. Backtracking causes random encounters which costs resources. Other than than, nice minimalistic aesthetic accompanied with pleasant synthy soundtrack. No bugs encountered whatsoever and, of course... runs great on Linux.