Knights of Pen and Paper 3

So, this is a weird one. [h3]TLDR:[/h3] As a standalone game it's... meh. But as a sequel to the previous knights of pen and paper games, it's terrible. They did not improve what could/should have been improved from the prequel, they made what was alright worse, and they removed what was good. I am leaving this negative review as someone who expected an improvement from the previous game, and I will explain why it's worse. Yes they removed a bunch of features from the previous games, including the iconic game room that was the whole unique charm of it. The lack of cloud saving and multiple save files is a bit annoying but well, that's not the big issue that deserves the negative reviews. The real bad stuff is that their game design got worse. Good stuff went away, bad stuff appeared. Visually it's stunning however, that's some very great pixel art right there. [h3]Now, some early game impressions:[/h3] - The "highly customizable characters" sell point is a lie. It's the exact same customization for characters as for the prequel, but with less features and less clarity. You can choose a profession and race that only slightly adjust your stats. That's it. Rest is just gear, which is normal for an RPG, not something that allows you to say "highly" customizable. If anything it's less customizable than before since they removed profession perks and dual wielding. - You don't get visuals telling you which stats a profession boosts, leaving you constantly switching from one to another and checking each stat change one by one as you cycle. Sure these stats changes are small and don't matter much in the late game, but minmaxing and crafting your own team build is part of the fun in rpgs! Hell this isn't even about minmaxing here it's about having the feeling that you understand what you're doing, and it's super frustrating when simple things that should be a given for the genre have a hard time making sense! - The stats system is weird, sometimes you see your defense or attack, or the damage of your skill going up while your core stats are going down and it doesn't make sense. It's hard to get an overall visualization of your characters strengths and weaknesses at a glance. For example, the description of Body says "affects HP, defense, and speed" but when you equip an item that increases your body stats, none of these secondary stat go up! - You don't get told which stats makes your class better. Some skills scale with spell power, some with attack power, same for basic attacks. Some class basic attacks scale with attack power while their skill scale with spell power! - Skills still need to be leveled up to bring some of their properties up, and you can only level up skills with limited tomes you don't find everywhere. - You can't sell items. You can only destroy gear at the blacksmith for some materials that I never ended up using. - The threat mechanic is gone, now there are only some limited skills that serve to taunt certain mobs, otherwise it's about using spells to avoid or mitigate attacks. - The side quests are partly randomly generated. If a quest does not reward anything else than gold and experience, it's a randomly generated side quest you can skip. - The shop is randomized. WHY?! If one of your new character is left without any good gear, well I'm sorry but I still don't understand how and when the shop's stock gets rerolled. [h3]Then, some end game impressions:[/h3] - The difficulty ramps up way faster than your characters do. In the end game, some quests will reward you with epic-quality weapons. The character you give it to turns into a god carry without which you cannot complete the game. - A level one character will be more powerful than any other if you give it one of these weapon. Leveling up feels useless. - The only way I've found to win end game fights is repeat until you get lucky enough for your important characters to not get one-shot by the entire enemy team going first so you can set up defenses. - You don't get told where important side quests appear. You have to revisit every area and check available quests for something good. That's how I found out after dying to the last boss a few times the quest giving the item that allowed me to finally defeat it. - Some bugs here and there. Not gamebreaking, but worrying when your character's health and mana bars disappear from the screen during a battle. An annoying one is when buff/debuff icons show incorrectly on enemies. It can really mess up your play and strategy. - Dungeons advertise rare items but I've gone all the way to level 25 and haven't gotten a single one. - I have absolutely no clue what the "Investigate" feature in dungeon is for. It doesn't seem to do anything at any time or any place. - Battles are slow after a while, so many dice rolls for statuses, these things take up half of the battle time I swear. - Some class skills descriptions are misleading, or plain wrong. The inquisitor inflicts wither, not sleep or weakness, which I counted on to synergize with my build when I unlocked it :c And the spiritwalker's shield says "all incoming damage to other party members is redirected to you and reduced by 3%" In reality, it is: "3% of incoming damage to other party members is redirected to you." The damage isn't reduced, and your allies still take most of it. Quite the betrayal when you find this out by trying to make it your main tank after unlocking it :) [h3]Then, here's a bunch of bull that stayed from the previous game that they should've fixed instead of making bad new ideas:[/h3] - Enemy initiative is still rigged and much better than yours if you don't specialize in increasing it. From the mid game to the end of it, every single monster in every single fight went before my entire team all the time, I'm not exaggerating. - Saving throws are useless. You got a status effect, you keep it until the end of the battle. Especially now that status effects stack, and a successful throw only removes half your stacks. And no skills or items to clear them! The cleric's blessing sounds good but in practice i didn't experience a notable difference even after leveling it up to 6. - No more threat, so your squishies get focused and smashed easier and more often than before. Hell even your tanks get oneshot in the end game. - Still no good single-target heal to counter damage spikes when that happens. Lay on hands requires your physical class (paladin) to have lots of spell power to be worth it, making its other skills useless - Class design and balance still needs some work. Some skills are rarely used, you'll still mostly stick to half of the skills available to you. [h3]And instead of designing good features or fixing bad stuff, as you've heard they removed good things, some of them I've already mentioned:[/h3] - No more game room - Only one save file, if you restart you can't use all the classes you've unlocked - No unique feature for each profession - No more reliable shop to gear up new characters or find better weapons - No more selecting the enemies yourself for free battles, so have fun with quests that require to kill certain mobs - Bestiary gone - No search rolls to discover fun and good items - Can't change a character's class, all start level 1. - No dual wielding. Off-hand is for off-hand specific items such as shields or off-hand knives. When healers start using rogue knives just cause it's better than leaving their off hand empty, you really start thinking you're doing something wrong - Shield action gone. For what? If the only mob on the field reflects damage (that's half the mobs in the late game), you're unsure how to waste a low health chars turn. In summary, I expected so much more from that sequel. I'll repeat myself, but except for the graphics, it's worse than the prequel in everything it should have improved, and made things that were alright worse. And it's infuriating when you know how much better it could have been if you care about the series!