Fatekeeper

Wiadomo, że gra jest jeszcze na etapie „Early Access”, ale już czuć, że chce być duchowym spadkobiercą „Dark Messiah of Might and Magic”. Mechanika walki wymaga jednak wielu poprawek jak na produkcję tego typu. SI przeciwników woła o pomstę do nieba – łucznicy, zamiast podążać za graczem, stoją w miejscu i bez przerwy strzelają niczym z karabinu maszynowego. Z kolei przeciwnicy uzbrojeni we włócznie są praktycznie nie do zatrzymania – nawet poprawnie wykonywane bloki nie przerywają ich ataków. Telekineza do podnoszenia przedmiotów jest ciekawym rozwiązaniem, ale gracz powinien mieć również możliwość samodzielnego podnoszenia skrzynek czy innych obiektów i rzucania nimi w nacierających przeciwników. Gra wymaga także optymalizacji, ponieważ zawiera mnóstwo artefaktów graficznych, które bardzo rzucają się w oczy i psują odbiór rozgrywki. Jeśli twórcy posłuchają opinii graczy, zainspirują się starszymi tytułami tego gatunku i jednocześnie dodadzą własne, nowe mechaniki, może z tego powstać naprawdę świetna produkcja. Na ten moment wystawiam jednak ocenę negatywną, ponieważ zbyt wiele elementów jest niedopracowanych, nawet jak na grę znajdującą się we wczesnym dostępie.

I actually liked the game at the start, but the more I played, the more frustrating it became. I don't really like complaining about difficulty in games, but there's a huge ramp up in it right around the first boss. You do not regenerate health passively. Nor do you mana from what I could tell, at least not without the proper skills obtained after 10 or so levels. The more I'll explain the game, the more you'll understand why this decision hinders the game at every turn. There's a weighty-ness to everything you do, while it doesn't hinder the gameplay per say, it doesn't contribute the weighty impactful melee combat feeling to the game that I think the developers were intending for it to, instead it feels like everything is underwater. You start the game as a melee focused warrior with some minor magical abilities that felt pretty inconsequential to everything you do. While the telekinesis ability is used for some 'puzzles', it feels like it's not needed for much else. Or at least, that is the impression it gave. The actual magic attacks are these wide-swinging, fast moving spells that do basically the bare minimum amount of damage to an enemy. Your mana pool is incredibly small and does not regenerate, meaning after 3 fireballs, you're unable to cast another, and the base enemy you have managed to hit with all three might still be up and kicking. That is unless you landed 2 in a row and got lucky enough for him to catch on fire, which won't happen if your second fireball decides to go wide and slam into the ground cause someone on the development team thought the visuals of the wide-swinging proton torpedoes looked cool and didn't account for how that actually functions in gameplay. (Sorry for the strays whoever you are, sure it's visually cool, but I guess now you know how that wall felt.) The number of swings it takes you to kill enemies with your melee weapon, and the number of swings it takes for them to kill you, feel roughly the same, somewhere in the 4-6 hit range. Sure, you can block, dodge, and kick, all at the cost of stamina, and even when you get ganged up on, which you WILL, you can still come out on top most of the time as long as you're smart, careful, and concise. Which would be great, however... Maybe 40% of enemies will actually try to fight you in melee, in this seemingly melee-focused game. Most of them throw rocks with shocking accuracy, shoot bows at you, with infinite arrows, which do very high, unblockable damage, OR they hurl stink bombs at you which leave behind a cloud of poison and by the time they dissipate, they've already hurled another into the exact same spot, forcing you to pass through them to proceed. Taking basically unavoidable damage... With non-regenerating health. Do you see the issue here? You don't start with a shield and I'm not sure how, when, or even if you get one, which might stand a chance at blocking incoming arrows and rocks, but you basically have to be spamming your dodge button as long as you're in the open, or taking unnecessary damage that will not regenerate on its own. And dodge of course, takes up stamina, along with every other physical action, meaning you can't do it forever, and you especially can't do it while also fighting. But you're not totally helpless, you have potions you can craft, with finite resources. Potions that, depending on the situation, you might get stunlocked out of being able to use in the most dire moment you NEED to use it in. Because yes, despite the enemy already having such clear, numerous edges over you, you can still be affected by stun. Which has a way of leaving you open to more attacks, and kind of sending you quickly into a damage > stun > damage > stun death spiral. Meaning if you get surrounded and hit even once, there's a chance can very quickly find yourself from having control of a situation into restarting from your last save point. But, speaking of potions. There are also vials of weapon coatings you can craft and deploy, which, on the surface, sounds very cool. But when should I use them? On the enemies that die in 3-4 normal hits? On the rare boss enemies that don't show you their health bar so you don't know how much damage you're doing or NEED to be doing? What are their weaknesses? Why do I need to cover my melee weapon in poison when I can just kick enemies in melee range into these convenient walls of spikes for an instant kill? I don't see ever spending my finite alchemical ingredients on making these things. Ideas that don't get overly considered like this is how you end up with feature-bloat. 'Difficulty' is a very tricky thing to handle in a game. You have to get the rules just right, and make sure they stay consistent, as it can very quickly feel more like blatant sadism if not handled precisely and correctly. Finally, I'm aware that this is still an early access game and as a fan of Dark Messiah and other similar games, I will say this game does have potential, so I do genuinely hope they improve it down the road.

this game was fun for about 30 min then its just the same ♥♥♥♥ over and over looks really good loved the first 30 min when everything felt new and cool after that its pretty mid

Ganz einfach gesagt, es sieht sehr gut aus, es hat gute Physiks, ein guten Aufbau vom verbessern und ein gutes Kampf System. Aber ich würde mich freuen die Zeiten zum benutzen vom Potions und Vials zu verkürzen. Aber sonst freue ich mich aufs Game SEHR.

This game has major potential to be a genre milestone. As-is, here is the good and bad: Good: -The graphics are incredible. Really S-tier. Performance is good to very good on high settings on my machine. Lower-end machines may struggle, though. -Very cool fantasy-realism aesthetic without trying to reinvent the wheel. They take well-loved dark fantasy tropes and do it well. Think R-rated LotR. Thematically it borrows heavily from Dark Souls and LotR. -Combat is good enough at this point. I'm sure they will refine it over time, but it's more of a brutal physics-based hack n slash combat, with basic combat spells. Needs work: -HUGE mistake releasing this without controller support. A first-person slasher works best with a controller, and I think most players of this genre prefer controllers. Currently you can do a workaround with Steam Overlays, but it's not perfect, and only slightly less annoying than using a mouse and keyboard. This should be priority number one for the next update. -I'd like to see combat more crisp, with a targeting feature. Add difficulty levels for those people who need everything to be hard. -I'd like to see a character customization/class build menu when you start a new game. That's probably coming, I imagine. -Right now it's not clear at all where you are supposed to go to progress through the world; there's a lot of wandering around. Some sort of a navigation feature or path spell would be nice. Overall this SHOULD shape up to be a landmark game, if they listen to players and dont let it languish in early access for years.

In it's current state, its a glorified demo. It plays fine, its got fun moments, but theres nothing here I want to sink into. It got boring after the first couple hours. For $10 its fun to try with the hope a full release will be worth it.

add controller support

Played the 0.1.2 version, 2-3h of playable content. It looks wonderful and promises to scratch the 'Dark Messiah' itch. The beloved physics are back with powerful kicks, rolling barrels and fragile platforms (some wood fragments still rotating at blinding speed, as expected in EA). I had a great time and played the whole early acess two times. There is little lore but I have high hopes for the [spoiler] charming evil raspy rat [/spoiler] companion. The world -exterior- looks stunning. Landscape, caves and far away structures are as good as they can be. Dungeons are bit of a mixed bag: I like the feel and general structure, but low prop variety make them feel both generic and sometimes difficult to navigate. There are secret rooms that make exploring rewarding and add to the adventure feel, not sure if I am very fond of all that jumping with heavy-looking armor tho. Combat wise I feel that weapons are effective against mobs. The hit effects look good and even had an enemy trying to fight me after losing an arm. Stamina management is tricky the first minutes of gameplay, not much of an issue later. Archers, at the current state, feel unfair. Very good aim and damage. Sometimes you have to make a run for it or use the environment or magic against them -which is interesting- but you always pay the health tax. I guess that we'll get a shield in future patches. Magic feels underwhelming (llow level, at least) -Fire magic consumes a lot of mana for low damage. The DoT is also very low damage. -Ice magic is good to slow some mid-tier enemy. Many interactions cause FPS drops, so I try to avoid it. -Wind magic takes a bit of time to cast, but can be a good opener for big groups of enemies. I feel it should disperse both poison clouds and enemy projectiles, to be fair. -Telekinesis is the utility/fun tool. I feel that launching a spear against the most basic mob should kill it and that most mid-tier enemies just ignore it, but I have not tried the specialization. Boss fights are boring. Slow, clunky animations with heavy damage that knocks you to the ground. Easy with potent vials, slow and boring if not. The skill tree and leveling system looks generic. While you can specialize heavily in one combat style. Most upgrades look like '+1 damage/mana/hp'. Other games opt for very specialized upgrades and/or three different skill trees that reduce decision fatigue, I hope they would go for it. [hr][/hr] I really look forward for the game to be completed and have a blast with it. Best of luck!!