[b][quote][url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asset_flip]Warning: Asset Flip![/url][/quote][/b]Medieval Arms is a Digital Homicide style asset flip, or what Valve calls a "Fake Game". The "developer" paid for/pirated a few Unity asset store packs, dumped them all in a blender, submitted it to Valve as if they're real game developers.
Two notable criteria for what makes an asset flip instead of legitimate use of stock assets are whether those assets comprise the majority of the game, whether the "developer" properly credited the people who created most of the assets in the game. This game fails both of those tests. The "developers" here didn't credit any of the real game developers who created the assets, this is plagiarism, cash grab shovelware.
This asset flip is a very poorly assembled third person brawler with a bunch of medieval fighter characters dumped on it. All you do is accompany a bunch of NPC soldiers to go fight a bunch of enemy NPC soldiers. Like Mount + Blade, but without any mounts, with out the grand strategy aspect of it, without any progression, and if the combat was utterly crap. You can do combos, though, I suspect that's from the third person brawler assets the developer ripped off when making this asset flip. There's no value here as a real game.
There's no option to change the resolution and no useful graphics tweaks. There's no way to ensure this is running at native display resolution. There's no guarantee this game will look right as a result of this hamfisted design decision. Likewise, controls are locked... the "developer" did the absolute bare minimum and quickly dumped this onto Steam to try get paid for someone else's game assets.
We can measure the interest and quality of a game by how much people played it. There's achievements, and they show us a very clear picture that the game absolutely failed to capture any interest from gamers. The most commonly and easily attained achievement is for taking 100 damage, this happens in less than 3 minutes of playing the game, trivial to achieve, but less than 9 percent of players bothered to get that far before uninstalling the game. That's a tiny, tiny proportion of gamers who even bothered with this. Ouch.
The poor quality of this game is also reflected by how many people spent time with it. SteamDB shows the all-time peak player number was only 2 players. This is a remarkably low number, now, the only player activity occurs once or twice a month. Considering this is a crap asset flip, no surprises.
[b][quote][url=https://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2017/01/18/steam-takes-down-art-of-stealth-after-developer-posts-fake-reviews/?sh=750e13e12354]Warning: Review Manipulation![/url][/quote][/b]This game features a small number of fake positive reviews from accounts known to be in the business of review manipulation/paid reviews. They're all written in either Russian or broken English, appear at almost exactly the same time, very shortly after the game launched on Steam, all have a direct Steam purchase of the game, the accounts are used consistently to write fake reviews for asset flips and other cash grabs/scams. The "Positive" review score on this game should be disregarded due to this blatant, unethical review manipulation. This is done to deceive and scam gamers into paying for a bad product.
Medieval Arms has the utterly unrealistic price of around $4 USD, it's not worth it given the defects and shortcomings with the product, especially considering the unethical nature of the developer. Remember that if you buy a game from an unethical developer, you're putting your money at risk.
[b][quote][url=https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/marketing/profile]Profile Features Limited![/url][/quote][/b]Valve have marked this game as "Profile Features Limited" at the time of this review. This is usually caused by poor sales figures and low community acceptance for the game (to date). Until this status changes, this game will not give you +1 to your Game Collector badge count, appear in profile achievements or any other Steam meta-accomplishments, nor can it be displayed in some profile showcases. If these factors are important to you, it may be worth holding off before buying this game.
[quote][url=https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/store/reviews]Developer Response![/url][/quote]The developer has weighed in to inform everyone they didn't read the [url=https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/store/reviews]Developer Usage Rules[/url] for Steam "partners", or they deliberately ignored the part where Valve says:
[quote]Though it may be tempting, not every review needs to be responded to. A developer response will frequently draw more attention than the original statement, potentially turning a small issue into a much larger community discussion. It's also not a good idea to use this feature to refute customer opinions. Your direct attention can be seen as validation or a defensive attempt to silence your customers.[/quote]
The developer attacks my review to avoid accepting the truth about this asset flip, they tell a bunch of outright lies at the same time. This dishonesty is harmful to them and to gamers, but their cognitive dissonance explains a lot (and excuses nothing). Let's go into the lies.
First lie: This isn't an asset flip. So this "developer" who never had a professional job in the industry and slapped this game together in the space of probably a week and a half crapped this garbage out with a number of full AAA quality game assets, fully animated, with no backing gameplay of any quality? Complete and utter BS, they used someone else's assets and didn't credit them. For profit. Why did the developer lie?
The developer then lies about how Profile Features Limited works by claiming it's just about achievements. Bullcrap again. Thousands of indie games without achievements are PFL. Thousands of AAA games with achievements aren't PFL. PFL is all about preventing Russian card scams, only gets lifted from a Steam Direct game after a number of sales and if the developer passes certain checks. [b]This is clearly documented by Valve[/b]. The developer has outright lied about this.
Third lie: Resolution changing and meaningful graphics tweaks. I went into the menu options as I assessed this asset flip. You can't change the resolution, the graphics "tweaks" are just "low, high" etc... garbage and meaningless to gamers, [b]as I stated in my review[/b]. Another lie to decieve gamers.
The developer laughably claims they didn't pay for reviews. I'm sure the Russian accounts that only write reviews for asset flips from groups like GarageGames and Galescorp took the time out of their day to translate Russian text into broken English for this game completely for free. Gamers, you've seen how the developer is a compulsive liar, so you be the judge.
The developer claims I'm "destroying their reputation", but all I've told gamers is the truth about this crap asset flip. If the developer thinks the truth is harmful to them, the problem is all on their side, they should ask themselves if all these lies and this harmful asset flipping is worth inflicting on gamers just so they can pretend for 5 minutes that they're a real game developer. This garbage asset flip pollution is harmful to gamers, this crap should be removed from the store, so genuine amateur developers who do the right thing have less pollution to compete with.
The lies, dishonesty and unethical behaviour from the developer, as I've laid out with clear reason and fact, serves only to harm gamers and give real indie developers a bad name. It's harmful and toxic. You can see, now, how such a crap asset flip such as this can come to exist, why gamers should rightfully avoid such bad products.
Nothing in the developers lies or pointless breach of Valve guidelines changes any of the objective facts of my review. My review stands unaltered. I cannot recommend this game to anyone.
Please remove this asset flip immediately.
