The End of Dyeus

Great concept marred by annoying and repetitive combat. The opening was great - it really did feel like OG Zelda. But it quickly devolves in to walking backwards while clicking your mouse as groups of enemies endlessly sprint at you with extremely fast attack patterns. There is no nuance to the combat behaviours at all. It's just "if player is closer, attack. if player is far, run to player". Attacking from stealth seems to make zero difference, and just results in enemies instantly turning to you and swinging their weapon. It's a real shame, because with just a few tweaks it could be very enjoyable, and there's obviously been a lot of thought and effort put in to the rest of the game. If there was just some rhythm to the combat, some spacing or timing to attacks, I would definitely recommend it. But as is, it's mostly just frustrating to play.

Prefacing this review by clarifying that my Steam playtime is 0.1 hours but I've played through over a dozen times outside of Steam, achieved every Feat, replayed for the Second Quest update, etc. and only bought it on Steam to leave a public review. I haven't played a game with as much of what I want from my games as this one. It's as raw as an action/adventure game gets. Every enemy encounter is a one-on-one battle that takes your attention away from whatever exploration you were doing until the enemy's gone, there isn't a single point that tells you you're not allowed to enter this area before you've found a key item, everything's just out there and you're tossed in the middle. The gameplay loop is comparable to Dark Souls, but with everything focused to its essentials. There isn't a "dodge" button: you dodge by moving yourself out of the way of attacks. There isn't a "parry" button, you parry enemies by countering their attacks when they've made a move and left an opening before you're hit. There aren't strong attacks or leveling up, you discover weaknesses of enemies and as your skill/knowledge of enemy behavior increases and realize how to approach further into rougher territory without getting slaughtered by the first guard. Slower, more observant playing is rewarded constantly, and every encounter in this game reveals its vulnerability when you watch for it and plan for a successful attack. The attention-based difficulty is so prevalent that you've got some reviews claiming this game tosses unavoidable hordes of enemies at you with no way out but running and wishing you were given more to work with. Truth is, you're given an incredibly basic set of moves (move, block, sneak, attack, and inventory), and it's more than enough to trivialize everything the game throws at you as long as you don't expect to keep one simple strategy the whole time. I know I've been talking in vagues for the whole review, but this isn't a guide, and I don't want to spoil the most fulfilling parts of learning the game, which is trying out slight changes to find more general techniques that apply across the map. The End of Dyeus is cryptic in the sense that you aren't fed anything outright, but it also doesn't hide any sneaky hidden tricks from the player and always leaves you with room for experimentation. This game is simple in its mechanics, varied in its gameplay, and consistently fun and rewarding even after multiple replays. The End of Dyeus isn't for everyone but is definitely for me, check it out. If guns/stealth, uncertain/open-ended plot progression, and customizable power upgrades are more your style, try the developer's previous game, [i]Worlds[/i], which is much more daunting than End of Dyeus but is how I discovered these games. The developer behind Curious Planet is a master of game design and knows how to put together consistently fantastic games in long-established genres.

Вроде прикольный опенворлдовый... зельда-лайк? Ходишь, по миру без указателей, собираешь шмотки, сражаешься с противниками, собираешь новые шмотки, побеждаешь боссов и т.д.. Но для меня этот луп просто не работает, как собирать новые предметы, если их все охраняют противники, а я не могу даже с одной пачкой справится? Прокачки нет, возможности лечится во время боя нет. Стать сильнее можно только с предметами, но куда бы я не пошёл - противников слишком много или они значительно сильнее меня. А боевка тоже не блещет навыком, как обычно у инди игр тут проблема с ощущением расстояния атаки, щит блокирует, но не создает окна для твоей атаки, противники просто продолжают спамить свою атаку в блок, стрелы конечные, так что всех луком победить не получится. В общем, я не могу понять как тут прогрессировать и чем дальше, тем больше меня раздражают бои, поэтому дроп. Причем первые 40-60 минут было вполне прикольно, мне понравилось, игра красивая, музыка кайф, но потом противники становятся и сильнее и их значительно больше, куда бы я не пошёл, и начинается просто раздражение какое-то лютое.

A fantastic adventure. If you think A Link to the Past and Oblivion smashed together would be fun. You will love this.

I don't know, man. [strike]Maybe when/if I finish the final area [spoiler]post-apocalyptic Earth[/spoiler] my opinion will change, but[/strike] [spoiler](EDIT: Just beat it, last boss was godawful even if it only took 2 tries. Literal spam fight)[/spoiler] god did this game ever fall from a solid recommend to a "I can't possibly recommend this game to anyone" at about the point where I started trying to explore the wasteland biome. Dyeus is a neat game in concept. It's basically a small-ish open world where the only power you can gain is gear, and the only gear you get is from exploring, so you need to explore everything. Combat is just LMB for attack, RMB for block, spam until the enemy dies, which is fine. If the entire game was paced and balanced like the first hour or so, just mildly increasing in difficulty over time, it would be fine. It would be great, even, though certainly too short. The issue is that it's not paced like that, it's still short, and it doesn't respect your time. Dying doesn't cost you anything unless you have a soulstone that resurrects you on the spot, you just pop back to your checkpoint and keep going. This is alright, plenty of games do this, but the dev of this game seemed to take this mechanic as a license to create some of the most irritating, spongy, and downright hyperlethal enemies I've seen in a game like this. Everything in the back half will either take way too long to kill, hit you through your shield (yes, even the best one for some attacks), knock you flying back on hit, zip around to become near-impossible to target, block 90% of your attacks, or [i]some combination of these[/i]. How do you beat this? Why, ranged attacks of course, except enemies don't actually drop enough ammo to sustain you (due to their health) so you WILL run out of ammo, you WILL have to go back to a merchant somewhere to buy more and you WILL basically have to grind if you die too much later on. Did I mention there's no map? There's no map. You can look at some maps you find in the world but apparently John Dyeus is too dumb to just pick one up so you can look at it whenever. Anyway, the part that ended up putting this solidly in the "can't recommend" section is when you finally, after finding the [spoiler]plasma gun[/spoiler], have enough power to maybe kill boss #3 if its AI doesn't spam an attack that can guarantee damage even through your shield because its start-up can run too short for you to strafe it properly (the intended dodge mechanic for that attack). Then, after you kill the boss and go waste more ammo re-clearing guys you likely already killed once or twice to open the stupid gate with your three gold apples you basically [spoiler]get warped out of the world, stripped of all your gear, and have to start over clubbing idiots with a bone in Nevada while fighting off the G-Virus or something[/spoiler]. So I played like 15 more minutes [spoiler]looking for a shield and failing to find one[/spoiler] then decided to write this review. This is a really good idea for a game, executed poorly. I don't know what planet the dev lives on, but a solid 50% of the mechanics put into this game are actively unfun or time-wasting from the perspective of someone living on Earth. It is not fun to nearly get locked in a zone because you checkpointed badly and everything kills you in 2 hits. It is not fun to fight mosquitos with a dagger, especially when the mosquitos have ranged attacks. It is not fun to get knocked 10 feet back by the melee attack of a frog the size of a large pomeranian. It is not fun to end up wasting red keys on gear you already bought from merchants with zero warning. It is not fun to have to do this much ranged combat with no crosshair or aim guide (bow is at least usable). It is not fun to not find a single melee weapon worth using for like ~60% of your run because the two best weapons are easy to find early. It is not fun to have no idea what many accessories do. It is not fun having no hotkeys. It is not fun to have to do semi-precise navigation for certain secrets with no map. It is not fun to have enemies absolutely spam shield-busting ranged attacks at you while their melee allies block every hit you try to inflict and can kill you in ~3 hits if you don't block. It is not fun to get randomly teleported around in the woods. It is not fun to have zero idea what attacks you can actually block and what ones will kill you through your shield. It is not fun to [spoiler]have all your gear, and thus character progress, removed[/spoiler]. It is not fun to have your difficulty curve resemble two horizontal lines, one on the floor and one on the ceiling, with a vertical line connecting them. I could go on but I think you get the point. ---- Also, if you're on a dual-monitor display, or maybe a 4k (not sure), you need to adjust your high DPI settings in the exe's properties and allow it to do its own scaling to get the game to display properly. If, for some reason, you do want to play this game, and it opens up only showing you ~25% of the screen, that's the issue and it's a quick fix.

I was following this game since early development days. I really enjoyed Worlds by the same dev and wanted to see what he was up to. He didn't dissapoint. I got simplistic, but pretty decent open world adventure game that kinda feels like early Zeldas, but in first person

Great game for fans of rewarding open world exploration and tightly designed challenging encounters. The open world is Zelda-ish, a medium sized dense map filled with hundreds of chests, upgrades, secrets and encounters. The encounters are very specifically designed challenges closer to a souls game, however you don't lose anything when you die more similar to Zelda. Game is tough (there is a death counter, I had about 200 by the end of my first run), but overall rewarding figuring out how to get through or around each encounter. You have some good options between stealth and berserk darts and ranged weapons in addition to the melee combat. The melee combat is interesting but could be better and doesn't quite compare to some other indie melee fps games. Enemy shields are very numerous and shields are overpowered without a certain scroll, which can make traversal a bit annoying when having to deal with lots of shielded enemies. Also there are a few sections with ranged spam reminiscent of Ninja Gaiden 2 rockets or that one Dark Souls 2 magic missile spam section. Definitely a challenging game, but not too frustrating. Just makes you want to keep trying different approaches each death. Graphically the game has some of the best weather effects I've seen in a solo indie title. The time of day changes and the weather can actually impact gameplay with fog rolling in at night obscuring vision. Also sets the mood very well. Not sure if enemy AI is impacted by the weather or just the player. Music is simple but catchy and the story/lore is interesting enough to carry the 5-15 hour game length. There's no NPCs to talk to but there are books to find to tell the tale throughout the world. There's also a newly released 2nd quest that's a Zelda OoT Master Quest remixed harder version of the game. Since the game is defined so much by its encounter designs, even the same map having all new encounters everywhere and moving items and bosses around changes up the game quite a bit. It's a pretty meaty and fun addition worth a play if you liked the first run by the end. Overall would recommend for those that like hard indie games/soulslikes as well as Zelda and rewarding exploration, the game's a great pickup. It has a bit similar vibe as Northern Journey. Only things I think would have helped would've been to have a dedicated button for health vials since you have to open the menu mid-fight to use them which isn't the greatest, and the enemy shields being less blocking everything from every angle all the time. I also think a dot crosshair would've been helpful for all the ranged weapons but I also get that aiming and then correcting your aim has its own fun and challenge to it. Also in 4k the game doesn't display correctly and cuts off the screen. If it does that you need open it with "-window" in properties and change the resolution to 1440p or less and it'll be fine.

Very good exploration game, excellent world design, the game might seem hard and frustrating but if you get the mechanics right its easy to do a deathless run when you use all the tools the game offers! solid game!

FPS Zelda in a great world to explore!

Après Worlds que j'aime beaucoup, je ne pouvais qu'être attentif au jeu suivant de Curious Planet et on a droit à un changement de registre, après l'action/aventure avec une forte dimension infiltration à la 3ème personne, The End of Dyeus est un jeu d'action en vue FPS et pas de mauvaise surprise, j'ai vraiment accroché à cette proposition. Les graphismes 'à la Minecraft' ne sont pas ceux que j'affectionne le + mais je trouve qu'ici, ça fonctionne bien, le design est accrocheur, la belle qualité les musiques et bruitages nous plonge également très efficacement dans son univers. Le gameplay très réactif rend les affrontements fort plaisants, le jeu n'est pas facile mais ne tombe jamais dans la difficulté injuste et ne prend pas les joueurs par la main en permanence comme tant d'autres jeux. Cet excellent dosage participe au plaisir de partir à l'aventure en explorant le monde ouvert, trouver des indices et chercher ses nombreux secrets, avec comme objectif global de découvrir la vérité sur Dyeus. Sans compter que la mise à jour surprise et gratuite "Second Quest" a rajoutée du contenu supplémentaire, de quoi s'amuser en attendant le prochain jeu du studio/dev et je sais déjà que mon intérêt sera encore là.