ok so you don’t know how steam refunds work
It’s two hours of game-time or less for a refund. And, you have to return it within 14 days.
If you can play to chapter 18 on your first playthrough in less than two hours, either you are a god of strategy, or the game has even worse issues than we thought because those maps are eeeeeeasy.
Ah, the Steam refund window is actually two hours for playtime, meaning that if you actively played more than two hours you can’t refund it.
I played the game, front to back, and I can confidently say that most everything Pik said is correct. You can break the game in half starting in Chapter 4 because permament Nos on 1-2 units was a great idea, obviously. Here is a demonstration of the “balance” involved (four of the top five units are nosferatu mages, the only odd man out being a 9 Move unit with 1-2 range.)
The story is really nothing worth mentioning; in their efforts to make every character feel included in the main plot, all that really happened was none of the characters really stand out or have meaningful characterization. The support system is bloated and starts by dumping 20 on you in Chapter 3, leaving you no real choice but to either read through the slog (I attempted this for a bit, but gave up due to boredom). The music choices are bizarre, and basically every map theme is offputting or maddening while tracks frequently jump up or down in volume, kind of like when commercials blare when you watch cable. The combat menu goes off the screen constantly, making pressing Wait impossible. Further, the UI in general is just confusing and roundabout, having way too many menus and poor allocation of what’s in them. The VA should not have been a priority in the slightest given all that went wrong with this game.
The maps, well… you’ve seen them. Empty squares are commonplace, and the actual aesthetics for the maps are frankly abysmal. The objectives are frequently poorly explained or obfuscated to make them seem more complicated than they are. Many of them are also just “walk in a straight line” with no incentive to split. Even the final map, the last note this game is left on, is a square (spoilered in case anyone cares):
And as much as I’d like to look at all the cool anims made by members of this community (one of the only bright spots), enemy phases are so long that I’d probably still be on Chapter 10 if I did that. Which, by the way, there are no map battle animations of any sort. No HP going down, no movement from the sprites indicating their attack… just going up to your unit, disappearing because lol nostanks, and giving exp. Both options kind of suck, but I chose the one that wasted less of my time. Lastly, while some of the art is good, much of the design behind it is not (Sloane has already been posted, and unfortunately, Dark Deity has more where that came from). Just take a look at Vesta or Liberty if you want an idea of that sort of thing.
In summary, yeah, it’s bad, chief. If anyone disagrees and has an informed opinion of the game (i.e. has watched significant amounts of it or played it themselves past the early game), I’d like to hear your reasoning. In my opinion, the game is hardly worth $10 from a consumer perspective in the state it’s in, let alone the $25 they plan to charge post-sale.
Literally no one will say that to you.
Again, I don’t think comparing a romhack you make in your spare time to a product you are paying for is fair.
The free product can certainly be better than the paid one, but I wouldn’t expect it.
If the free product is better, then I am going to scrutinize the paid one even more and push it to be worth what they’re asking.
Not exactly, a lot of kickstarter games that are trash start off just good enough that usually by the time that two hours pass, you’ve hit the “fuck it lets get lazy and rush” point of development.
Its like how some of the negative reviews on MH:Worlds steam page are from people with less then 20 minutes of game time who didn’t like how long it took them to customise their character before even getting a weapon.
After seeing Alfred’s post and the threads being merged I’ve decided I don’t respect the discussion with me in this thread and I’m deleting my posts.
Spreading baseless rumors isn’t okay.
Are you deliberately taking his quotes out of context to make him look bad? Or are you just using fallacies out of habit?
something something you are only allowed to have an opinion if you have played an arbitrary number of hours of something
but if you don’t play enough then you didn’t get to the good stuff
but also if you play too many than you can’t criticize it because then that means you must have liked it to play it so long
Serif unironically that one dude in Steam reviews who complains about negative reviewers playtime lol
The fuck are you on about here?? Pandan isn’t a mod and can’t delete posts bro
(I think??)
While I do agree with you regarding criticism, I don’t think they’re trying to say free products are inherently inferior, but rather that they expect more out of paid products. If you have to pay for a product, the maker usually has capital or some money they can use to make a better product, something romhackers usually don’t have. Romhackers can’t pay bills with games or get more teammates by paying them, while developers making more money off these games can, and thus they have more time or more people working on a product. Since there’s money involved in the product, you expect more because it’s their job, not just a passion project like romhacks or fangames. And if a consumer purchased an item, they want more out of their money and time, while if you play a romhack or fangame you’re usually not as invested since you never had to pay in the first place. There’s less sunk-cost fallacy (or if that’s the name) harming your experience.
Well yes you can get your money back, but… the disappointment after seeing a $20 game is not up to what the trailers and the build-ups tried to establish is… still there, and it’ll make you think, “Oh man, what a waste of time and money”.
No one is going to think the same way as you here, serif. Think of it this way, if you get free food, you’ll accept it nonetheless because you don’t lose anything (oh well maybe your tastebuds if the food isn’t delicious but eh). And when you’re buying 'em, you expect the food to be at least delicious and as worth as the money you spend it on.
Also, passion-driven projects and business-driven projects can’t be considered the same since their end-goals are Sure, both passion-driven projects and business-driven projects shows how the developers are being passionate on the project, but there is also money involved, so you have to fulfill your target no matter how you have to achieve it.
… Why do you have to take all of these personally again, serif?
So uh, I’m here to give you guys a gentle reminder, which has already been said by Gamma in another thread.
Thank you.
Jeez dude, he’s not being negative. You’re also generalizing way too hard. Personally i judge by quality and honest this game just seems like a lazy cash grab, but they way you sound its like we can’t have this opinion because we didn’t spend money on a crap game.
The way consumption of media has evolved to the point to where the consumer can actually develop an opinion on a game based on videos of gameplay rather than the baffilingly bad games journalism that exists currently.
Personally i’ve been genuinely impressed and enjoyed the rom hacks I’ve played due largely in part to having no basis of quality to compare them to, since every hack dev is different. So its pretty understandable for some people to have lowered expectations when there little experience of known quality. since i played Vision Quest and its fairly high quality, i now have a reasonably higher expectation of Pandan’s next hack being just as high quality.
People are also much harsher on a game giving a poor experience when its an indie dev on a kickstarted game. Remember the absolute shitshow that was Mighty No.9? A kickstarter game so bad it bricked consoles. That game single handedly soured people to kickstarted games.
By the way, we’ve got a screenshot of the final chapter’s map, hot off the presses.
Gawrsh. It’s a tiny bit prettier than Chapter 18, but just as completely barren!
Who was it that said DD only had one godawful zero-effort map?
Just one?
UPDATE:
Let’s add some more.
Still wracking my brain trying to figure out what part of the quoted thing is a comparison…
Replacing the point of the topic with a romhack is a hypothetical that serif thinks would result in the topic being shut down, that’s not a comparison is it?
Actually one of yhe mods in the other thread did say that it this was about another rom hack that they’d have locked/deleted the thread rather quickly, but that since this is about a 3rd party paid game it deserves this scrutiny. Granted I’m paraphrasing somewhat.
your opinion would probably be more valid if you didn’t say that you dislike a game that many others do for no reason other than to promote an old thread
I’m not going to comment on anything else since the game is cheap and I’ll probably end up buying it to give it a shot instead of relying on someone else’s opinion which is clearly different from my own influence it
Yes, it is a comparison. Serif is comparing the (admittedly biting) criticism of Dark Deity in a thread that’s not been taken down to hypothetical criticism of a hack, which would be. A comparison is being made. How this point of quibbling is relevant is not clear to me though.
The only thing that’s demoralizing to me is the abbreviation, DD, being attached to an object of widespread derision.
And it has a character named Vesta? Lovely.
Yeah, honestly this game reeks of a kickstarter dev getting way more money then they wanted and got overly ambitious and then overextended their resources and made a half baked product as a result. It happens far too often with kickstarter sadly.
haha
haahahah
ha…
You know, if you want to say something about Deity Device, you can say whatever you please about it in the Deity Device thread. It would be more constructive than dropping rude comments if I happen to bring it up elsewhere.
