Knights of the Chalice

Ok.. how do I start with this one. I picked it up on-sale since I was looking for some more 3.5 OGL goodness after really enjoying Low Magic Age. The graphics really struck a chord with me as they *really* scream "Ultima". I knew it was not Ultima, of course and the minimal character creation didn't bother me. You've got 3 classes: Knight, Cleric and Mage. I've started probably a half-dozen times just to see how things pan out using and not using specific settings. Here are my praises first. 1) Gold Box charm. Really reminds me of the old days of the Gold Box game.. to a degree. 2) I enjoy the yester-year inspired graphics. They just work really well. 3) Oddly I like the "sorcerer" style casting; you get so many slots per day and don't have to memorize spells as a cleric or mage. If you get 4x level 1 spells, you get your choice at any time. Now.. what I (subjective) don't like. 1) Balls to the wall hard from the gate. Listen, I've played Dark Souls, Bloodborne and yadda yadda so don't think I don't know a difficult game. But this will have you re-loading a lot. Or, you can select an option at character creation to give yourself 18's in all stats and make things.. a bit less unforgiving. You will lose out on some specific achievements, however. 2) Why in combat when I am standing in melee combat with an enemy do I sometimes default to ranged attack, specifically when I left-click an enemy on scroll-over? This is absolutely unacceptable. Too many times this happens and default should be ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ melee, and choose ranged with right click (like every other optional variance). So here I am, 2-h sword in range to cut down an enemy.. and I default to a bow and miss because wtf? 3) So no heavy armor use? I mean, you can use heavy armor.. if you want a move speed of like 3 squares. Meanwhile every other thing moves like 12 (literally everything can move faster than you in heavy armor-go medium at best; this is deadly and will kill you most of all: restricted move speed). God ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ help you if you get webbed. A single spider on the overworld can ♥♥♥♥ your entire party up in short order with a single web. Got heavy armor? Good. Now you can stand there forever spending each round trying to break free as the 12hp spider kills your mage and drinks your tears. Honestly, stick with lighter armor and turn on the maximized stats for some Dex bonus on all characters. 4) EVERYTHING targets your mage. Even animals which you would think just are.. you know.. animals.. and attack what is near but nah bro. Literally everything makes a b-line to your mage so it really becomes a game of "how can I position everyone to ready/AOO an attack next to my mage?". EDIT: I did seem to find a way to thwart enemies that aren't spell-casters: Just have everyone stay in their position (with mage in the back of course) and "Ready for attack" and wait for the enemy to come into range for AOO attacks. It's fairly likely they will have to pass beside a knight/cleric to get to the mage so maybe they get killed before they maul your mage. Riveting tactical combat. In all seriousness, however, I do get that *intelligent* monsters would want to target your mage. But wolves or a centipede? If you have a mage in your party get ready for the biggest game of hot-potato you have ever played. 5) Music is ok imo. I know people say they like it but to me it sounds kinda.. generic. Can't quite put my finger on it but it almost reminds me of tracks that would be included in an RPG Maker. 6) Default is windowed mode. Fine, there's an option to switch to full screen in the settings. Windowed mode gives 3 different settings and the 3rd (960x720-b) is imo the best. It allows a wider range of view but... this does not translate to full screen. No matter how I tried, in full screen the game just seems to be zoomed in too much to your party, unlike what windowed (960x720-b) showcases. So I guess windowed mode it is. With all this said, I will still play the game. I highly recommend turning on maximized stats or just re-rolling on each character at creation until you get the best you possibly can (probably for a fairly long time). It all just seems.. off. I can't recommend. EDIT 2: uninstall. Until this game is fixed it's pretty trash. Sorry devs, but what the ♥♥♥♥. This is a complete ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ mess.

Better than Baldur's Gate 3.

This game is soooo unfair. For example, every enemy cleric or mage knows ALL posibble spells for their class and level, but YOUR cleric and mage just gets a mere two new spells on level up. Or another example, your cleric can have only one summoned elemental at a time (which is clearly specified in spell's description, so it's all fine), but enemy cleric ? Of course, they can have as many freaking elementals at the same time as they want, because, well, **** you player. Of course these are just few of so many similar examples. And overally, encounters are just too diffucult. Seriously, you always get encounters with challenge rating at least few levels higher than your party level. And you can't grind in this game, so usually you'll end up reloading and reloading and reloading until you FINALLY get your lucky rolls. I really wanted to like this game, because it's not all bad. Combat itself would be good, if it would stay fair, and this game has THE BEST combat log I've ever seen in game. I know nobody cares about combat logs, but I like to keep track of everything that happens in combat, and here you can view EVERY single die roll. Combat UI is also very clear, I like how colors and sounds clearly indicates what type of damage was just dealt. But, unfortunately, instead of making fun, challenging tactical RPG devs have decided to make super-hardcore unfair unforgiving game that only the most dedicated die-hard D&D fans will enjoy. The rest will just uninstall this and play Battle Brothers or something else.

How do wolves know to attack my wizard?

(Follow [url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/42150626-Jarl%27s-Game-Treasury/]my curator[/url] for more reviews like this) Knights of the Chalice is a great little D&D adventure using the OGL 3.5 rules and offering plenty of challenging encounters to fight your way through. It's all combat, with a little exploration that can lead to optional areas with usually harder fights that offer valuable rewards. In my review of Knights of the Chalice 2, I said that I consider it the best implementation of D&D 3.5 ever put in a computer game. KotC1 isn't quite as complete as its sequel, giving you only three classes (fighter, wizard, cleric) to play with, but there's still a large toolbox of spells at your disposal and the encounters are incredibly fun to fight. While challenging, KotC1 is much easier than KotC2, so I'd recommend newcomers to start with the first game. I've seen some reviews claim the difficulty to be unfair, so I'd like to address this. It's true that KotC is not an easy game: the majority of encounters will be a real test of your tactical skills. Usually, you'll have to reload and retry major encounters a couple of times. Oftentimes, you will encounter enemies above your current level, and enemies have tools that can really screw you over, like archers with arrows of slaying that can insta-kill any of your characters on a successful hit. But the game gives you the tools to handle its challenges. Unlike official D&D rules, spellcasters in KotC don't have to memorize specific spells. If you have 4 level 1 spell slots, you can cast four of [i]any level 1 spell you want[/i] without having to prepare them. That gives you a lot of tactical flexibility, allowing your casters to respond to any situation that may arise on the battlefield. The enemy archers keep shooting slaying arrows at you? Have your cleric cast the death ward spell, which makes you immune from their instakill effect. You're facing a group of frost giants? Throw a fireball. The next encounter has fire giants? Make it a cone of cold or freezing sphere instead. This flexibility is key to winning KotC's encounters. I recommend a party consisting of one fighter, one cleric, and two wizards. Especially by the lategame, your wizards will control the battlefield, while the cleric offers some support and the fighter deals massive damage with an enchanted weapon. Speaking of which - another tool in your box is the enchant items feat, which lets you enchant any weapon and armor with any effect up to a total value of +10, for the cost of experience. Max level is 20, and by the endgame I had enough exeprience left over to outfit my entire party with overpowered magic weapons. You can have your fighter specialize in a weapon with a high crit range, such as the scimitar (18-20), take the improved critical feat which doubles the crit range (to 15-20), and enchant a scimitar with the life drain effect which will [i]level drain[/i] an enemy on critical hits. Even in difficult encounters with dozens of enemies and strong enemy spellcasters that outlevel you, you can dominate the battlefield if you use your tools right. Once you realize that dragons are easily hit by enervation rays (which cause level drain) and the level 1 ray of enfeeblement spell (which drains strength), they stop being so scary. Your two wizards can cast rays of enfeeblement on a dragon until his strength becomes zero, at which point he's unable to act and you can kill him with a coup de grace. If enemy spellcasters keep wrecking you in a particular encounter, have your cleric cast silence to create a zone in which they can't cast their spells. If enemy melee fighters keep beelining to your wizards, cast web to get them stuck or force them to take a long walk around the battlefield to avoid the web (the AI will always avoid hazards on the floor if possible). Battlefield control is key, and the only game that does it better than KotC is KotC2. If you're up for a combat-focused dungeon crawl with competent AI, challenging encounters that feel satisfying to beat, and excellent wizard duels where both your and the enemy's casters keep throwing spells at each other, Knights of the Chalice is a must play.

The textbook definition of "unknown gem". KotC is as hardcore as a turn-based tactical RPG can get and possibly the greatest implementation of D&D(3.5e) combat in a video game. The story is bare bones and exists solely to showcase the various combat situations you find yourself in. Perfect for small chunks of play before you gotta go somewhere or for hours of dungeon crawling late into the night. The main challenge comes from the developer's fascination with seemingly impossible, overwhelming surprise attacks and the small stable of classes(Fighter, Wizard, Cleric) and races(Human, Half-Elf, Mul) you have to create your small party of 4. Looks and sound might divide some people here but I find it all so damn charming. The music reminds me of educational games from the early 90's and the graphics and controls are like Ultima 7!!! If you are thirsting for the multi-layered battle-chess goodness that is 3.5 D&D combat then you have hit the jackpot here. If you are looking for a long involved story then that itch will not be scratched here. But if you give this game a shot, play ball with it and it's difficulty, you will find one of the most rewarding tactical turn based games of all time.

Overall I liked this Reto game. Two down-sides are that you cannot change your party formation and your foes, all of them always attack your wizard 1st.

Not as cool as Dark Sun Shattered Lands or Wake of the Ravager. Suffers from unbalanced combat.

The balance of the battles in this game is worse than even the worst RPGMaker games.

If you are a hardcore fan of Turn Based RPG and/or D&D 3.5e, I have no advice, I haven't played long enough the game to comment it with such perspective. It didn't work well for me, but to evaluate the game from this point of view, this would require a longer play, I played about 4H, some time was offline. For other players: It is based on open source D&D 3.5e which is a subset of D&D 3.5e. It's a good base, but this game is a prototype, too many design problems or weaknesses, too incomplete implementation of open source 3.5e with only 3 classes and 3 races. Not worth it, even less at its current price but not even at half its price. But take care that a more ambitious follow up is coming with Knights of the Chalice 2, so survey the dev next game is a thing to do for any RPG fan, even more for fans of D&D 3.5e. Some details on the weak points: - Advanced UI for such a low cost indie game, but incomplete, many important commands hidden behind non custom keys. The graphical UI is fairly well done and sometimes even good, but a lot too incomplete. - Too incomplete implementation of open source D&D 3.5e, only 3 classes and 3 races, no cover system or not well exploited, no stance as there's some in 3.5e or it's well hidden in UI. - Terrain combats flat and lacking of design around obstacles and covers. - No difficulty setting and the difficulty is too much RNG dependent or God characters dependent. - Writing is very pale, it does the job, but it's lacking of any flavor. - I'm fine with the pixel style, but it's a low quality in this game with unclear graphics, low aesthetic, and sometimes even texts uneasy to read. - There's a problem in the design related to mages killed quickly, at least in first combats of the game, it's not just very annoying, it's totally weird. - Party of 4, seriously, again? So even indie dev think they need hyper streamline their hyper niche games? - 5 save slots only? That's a console game or what? Some good points to quote: - Not tried, but it seems the game supports up to level 20. - If not all base mechanic of 3.5e are implemented, there's still a lot. - Text could be very neutral and lacking of imagination, but it's solid stuff and there are efforts to keep it shorter and favor efficiency over style, good choice for a video game. Moreover the game isn't shy on having many little talk that fill better the RPG world and areas. - The game is very fast, the AI could seem annoying (so sort of efficient) but at least it's not at price of slow down. A last note, I shouldn't mention it, and don't buy your game believing it will work the same on your Mac, but myself I played fine the game on Mac, with wine but also High Sierra, and a manager of wine I probably can't quote here.