Lufulus' Creatures

[b]My playtime:[/b] 27h (based on steam, 100% achievement) [b]Grindy Achievement(s):[/b] No. [b]Optional Achievement(s):[/b] Yes (~6 achievements). [b]Difficult Achievement(s):[/b] No. [h1]Intro[/h1] [i]Lufulus' Creatures[/i] is a top-down action RPG where you have to complete quests, level up, and kill bosses in each area. There are 15 areas in total. [b]Pros:[/b] - 15 areas with 2 different type of areas - Optional challenges give extra rewards for people who manage to complete it - Quests to keep you entertained - Banking system to get extra gold [b]Cons:[/b] - There is nothing to do at level 20+ except to grind levels for the final boss - Leveling up takes too much time at level 26+ - Dash stamina expires too fast - It's difficult to get unique gears and the stats are similar to the ones sold in shops - Soldiers die too fast [h1]Should you buy this game?[/h1] [b]No.[/b] [i]If you really want to play this game, you'd better off playing the dev's previous game, [url=https://store.steampowered.com/app/531890/Guardians_Oath/]Guardian's Oath[/url] ([url=https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198132503739/recommended/531890]my review[/url]). Both games are similar although Guardian's Oath is more enjoyable after you spend some hours in it.[/i] ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ [h1]In-Depth Review[/h1] [h1]Graphics[/h1] To be honest, I'm quite impressed with the prologue's art because it's an improvement from the dev's previous game, [i]Guardian's Oath[/i]. There are some beautiful-looking pictures and texts that explained the story before the game shifted into the actual game. The actual game screen looks pale in comparison though but you'll get used to it. [h1]Story[/h1] The story is told through the texts in the prologue and the conversation between each character. I noticed that there are a lot of grammatical errors in the prologue even though the dialogues are fine. However, the game lacks a conclusion. There aren't any stories after you reach level 20-ish, even after you killed the final boss. [h1]The game[/h1] [b]Exploration[/b] You can travel between areas by pressing the M button. There will be some places you can teleport to although most of them are locked until you reach a certain level. These places are usually either a town, a monster area with a boss in it, and a monster area that comes in waves. [b]Quests[/b] The game starts by giving out a lot of quests at once. You can complete these quests in any order that you want although there are some quests that you must complete before you exceed a certain level to get extra rewards. There are also some optional challenge items that you can buy to give more challenge to your main quests. [b]Stats[/b] You'll get 3 stat points and 1 skill points on level up. You can use stat points to increase your stat and skill points to learn or upgrade new skills. You also can get some stat points and skill points if you complete main quests, challenge, or defeat a boss called Lufulus' Wisdom in non-wave monster areas. [b]Skills[/b] You can learn active skills, passive skills, and [i]Supershock[/i] skill that can be upgraded into 3 different branches. All of the skills are maxed out at level 5 and you can learn [i]Supershock[/i] skill after you progress the story. Basically, [i]Supershock[/i] is an ultimate skill where you push your enemies and stun them for a while. Even though there are a lot of skills that you can learn, you can't learn all of them. I reached level 29 before I killed the final boss and I only maxed out 2 skills and almost maxed out 1 skill (4/5). [b]Leveling[/b] The game has a certain cap where you won't get any exp if the level of the monster that you killed is way lower than your level. This makes it hard to level past level 26 since the maximum level of the monsters are level 28. [b]Weapons[/b] You can use either sword or staff for your left hand and bow or shield for your right hand and you can switch them in battle. I find the staff to be useless though since you need to learn certain skills to use it effectively. [b]Monsters[/b] You can find monsters in monster areas. Although you can access the areas with a higher level than your level, I find it difficult to beat higher level monsters. Kiting them with a bow will make them attack me with a ranged attack and it's hard to gain distance from them because dash, which is activated by holding shift button, expires too fast. I was stuck with farming exp from lower-level enemies this way and it got boring sometimes. [b]Bosses[/b] There are 4 types of bosses in this game that won't respawn after you killed them. There is a Lufulus' Wisdom that you can kill in the non-wave monster areas, two bosses that will randomly appear in the non-wave monster areas, and the final boss. The second type of boss is quite easy to kill since you can kite them with your bow although I can't say the same for the others. Attacking Lufulus' Wisdom will summon normal monsters at a certain interval and you must either tank the damage or attack those monsters while making sure that the boss won't recover too much HP. The final boss is similar to Lufulus' Wisdom though except that the boss can prevent you from getting close to it. [b]Monster Areas[/b] There are 2 types of monster areas: wave areas and non-wave areas. Clearing all waves in the wave areas will mark the area as captainless. These areas will have slightly stronger enemies and give you more exp if you manage to clear them again. You also can exit the area even though you haven't cleared all the waves. Non-wave areas will have one Lufulus' Wisdom in it. There are also normal monsters and slightly stronger normal monsters called [i]Leader[/i]s roaming around. Killing Lufulus' Wisdom will increase their spawn rate. These monsters have a good chance of dropping more items and exp than normal monsters. [b]Banking[/b] The game has a banking system where you can store items to gain gold for the next day. To be honest, this banking system discourages me to hunt monsters because I can get more gold to upgrade my gears this way, especially since monsters hardly drop unique gears and the unique gears that you can get from monsters are similar to the ones sold in the shops. [b]Recruiting[/b] You can recruit soldiers by talking to NPC that spawns randomly in a monster area or recruit a soldier in one of the towns. You need to pay a certain amount of gold and you also need to pay daily upkeep for the latter one based on the level of soldiers you're recruiting. However, they seem to be useless since they die too fast. [b]Controls[/b] I find that there is a lot of information to take in when I started the game for the first time. There's a tutorial but you still need to learn most of the controls by yourself. I didn't know that you can use shift and space to see gear comparison side by side on the same upgrade level. I also had a problem where double click tends to not work and it took me several clicks just to take dropped items that way. It turns out that I also can do the same thing with right-click. [b]Length[/b] I killed the final boss and leveled up to level 30 in 18h. The rest of my playtime was spent in grinding for achievement to reach level 40 that was temporarily removed after I suggested the dev to do so. [b]Problems[/b] I got several random crashes when I played the game. There were also some instances when the game gave me less than 10 fps whenever I was in an area for too long. [h1]Conclusion[/h1] It's an action RPG game with a lot of quests to tackle although it becomes boring since there is nothing to do on level 20+. 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