Monthly Archives: February 2018

Tower of Time Early Access Thoughts

by Jason Parker (Ragachak)

Tower of Time - I See A Little Silhouette of a Man

Don’t get attached to this boy; you won’t see much of him.

I enjoy the classic RPGs of old. The ones where nothing is handed to you, you solve puzzles and put in lots of work just to get around. While I enjoy these games, technology has improved, and sometimes, those old ways of doing things can be seen as archaic. Some of these are rotating cameras, mini-maps, quest-tracking, things of that nature. But I recently sat down with Tower of Time, an RPG by Event Horizon, and it’s a call back to those games of yore on PC. One thing that is interesting, albeit jarring, is that you do not play the main character. He’s there, and you control him briefly, but most of the time is spent playing as a band of heroes that serve him. You start off as a nobody and wind up a powerful lord through means that are not explained in the early parts of the game. I won’t spoil the story, but your team explores the Tower of Time, this derelict tower in the north-eastern part of the “town map”, where you do almost all of your upgrading and training. This is a game that will not hold your hand at all, though there are a few difficulty options for those who want to be challenged, and for those who simply want to enjoy the story. There are secrets to find in the Tower, and only your heroes can do it.

Tower of Time - Victory

I do wish it gave more gold per win…

Specifically, the “Story” difficulty is for those people, and anything over “Normal” is pretty damn hard.You start off with just two characters, Kane and Maeve (Kane being a melee warrior, Maeve being a ranged archer) and as you explore, you’ll gain more characters and can have up to four of them in your party at once. These characters all feel different and have their own abilities to utilize. For example, the first addition to your party is an Elf, Aeric the Druid. He has a totem for healing, a weapon enchant (Earth Element) and can summon an Ent! The Ent will fight wherever he’s summoned, but if there’s nothing going on there, he might wander around. I am still not very clear how his AI works. But the Ent is a tank, can taunt and is pretty beefy. Certainly worth using in almost any situation. These characters are supposed to be the “best of the best”, but they start off at level 1. Winning fights does not give xp, but does give gold, gems, and items. Those gems can be used to forge new gear of various rarities at the Blacksmith in town. What you need are Blueprints, and finding these Blueprints in the tower is paramount.

Tower of Time - Craft

Most of what I have crafted has not been useful, except at the very beginning of my time with said character.

Using gold+blueprints to upgrade buildings in town (Mage Tower, Armory) will increase the amount of leveling up you can do. The base building is level 4 per character that uses it (casters use Mage Tower, for example), and the second is level 8 and so on. When you’re back in town, the Keep is where all of this goes on (and you can still access this menu while in the dungeon). This is where you equip weapons, set your skills ( as you improve, you gain new skills (8 skills in total per character) and you can equip four of them at once. You can also use skill points as you level to improve these powers, so if you aren’t 100% sure if you’re going to use a skill forever, fear not, because you can refund those skill points. Stat points require a Rare gem to refund, but skill points don’t seem to. You use gold to improve your character levels, but here’s where I run into my next problem. Though you can craft armor and weapons in the dungeon, you can also do it here in town. It’s a very simple process: Pick a character, an equipment slot, a tier and a gem. Each gem corresponds to a rarity of gear, and it takes 3 of a gem type to create a piece of gear. The item will be randomized 100%. I’m personally not all that crazy about games where almost all of the gear is randomized.

Tower of Time - Battle

Battle is engaging, but can be hard to get a hang of in the early going.

I wound up with a real serious clutter of worthless weapons and armor though, since every chest gave one, and every fight seemed to give one too. I was sincerely hoping you could sell these somewhere in town. There are several buildings on the town map you can click on, none appeared to let me sell. The only recourse I found was to dismantle them for gems. The rarity of the piece will give you the corresponding gem, which is nice at least. But I need gold! So I have to keep going back and farming money to level up characters, despite the game telling me they are the best badasses in the land. So there’s a pretty major disconnect there. It’s not too hard to gear up but you will spend some time going in and out of the Tower to farm. That’s not a big deal, that’s pretty standard RPG fare. There’s plenty of challenge here, too. Most of it is in actual gameplay, but again some of it seems to be weird design choices. Combat is done in a real-time format. You click “Start Battle” and the enemies begin to spawn from several locations on the edge of the map. The spawn points always make sense, but the maps always feel too big. There’s a lot of empty space on them, and you can’t quite scroll out enough to see them all, in many cases.

Tower of Time - Line of Sight

Having multiple enemy auras/line of sight attacks can be incredibly frustrating.

You choose your character with 1, 2, 3, or 4 and while that took a little time for me to get used to (I’m so used to clicking on them and then performing actions), that was okay with me. That could be chalked up to user error by all means. But there are some pretty weird choices. A prime example is Kane. He has a dash that can clear basically the entire screen. It’s his initiate and has an incredible range. It will also ignore walls, tables, chairs, any object or structure in his way, he just slides them through to get to the target. But if a ranged caster seems to even have a structure in the way, they’ll walk, slowly, around it to try and line up a shot. There are several enemies that poison/life drain also, and they have a line that fires from them to their target. It will also cover most of the screen and from the moment they spawn, it’s blasting someone on your team. You can get out of the line of sight, but they’ll find it eventually. However, this does lead me to one of the coolest parts of the game: Kane’s wall. His “W” ability summons a temporary wall of rock that appears out of the ground.

Tower of Time - Rocks

Roooooocks.

Why this is really cool, is you “draw” the wall. You use the mouse to draw a line/U shape to pin opponents down, force them out of the line of sight, or keep them stuck at their spawn point while you deal with other matters. There are also times when enemies can have a slow-moving AOE which will be warned by a red circle on the ground. You have to quickly swap to that character, move them out of the way, and then resume what you were doing. Combat feels slow in general, but this only slows it down further. The combat is good, mind, but it drags a little. I also feel that melee characters could have their threat-range increased. I’ve had enemies well within moving/striking distance of Kane, and he would just stand there doing nothing, whereas ranged units start shooting as soon as someone is in their shot reach. The other thing that I think is interesting about this is when you use abilities, you get a Time Slow/Stop, such as you’d find in The Matrix to give you time to figure out what you’re doing. This could have been removed if the game were turn-based.

Definitely Moving Forward: Still Hyped

Tower of Time - Torture

One of many choices that await players. Choose wisely, in all things.

I could have seen this as a turn-based game, but the real-time element worked fine. It does take some getting used to, and once you have some decent gear it won’t feel quite so overwhelming. The battles are mostly visible in the dungeon, but there are moments where you can get ambushed, based on what you do (throwing a stone down a well, for example). Sometimes these include traps and one or more members of the party will be caged, and those have to be broken before they can help. I do enjoy the real-time combat though, despite the few peculiar design choices, and this is one of the reasons the game has a lot of potential replayability. There are quite a few characters (7 in total) to pick and choose from, and each has their pros and cons. This game has plenty of side-quests and optional missions too, from offering sacrifices to a death god, optional battles (which are certainly challenging early on), secret passages and so much lore. There are of course bugs still (I started up and had to completely redo the Forge Quest that I did the day before, despite having saved) but it is Early Access, so that sort of thing is to be expected.

You even have “challenge” battles which take place outside of the regular exploring, and while it might seem there’s not much to do from the outset, you’ll find that is not at all the case. There are secrets you might not even realize are in front of you. There are magical fountains that can be consumed that change facets of your characters. Depending on the color of the water, they could be positive or negative, and can only be used once. Tower of Time is a throw-back in the best way. It’s not quite ready, but that’s the point of Early Access. It does feel slow at first, but the pace picks up once you’ve completed a few quests and gotten used to this new world you are exploring. Tower of Time could use some quality-of-life upgrades, such as a mini-map, but even without them, I think it will do just fine. It rewards exploration and clever thinking, and every choice you make will matter. The motion outside of battle feels a little weird though and can upset me visually after seeing it for long periods of time. All told, it still needs a bit of polish, but I’m enjoying my time with it and am looking forward to discovering more of its secrets.

A review code was provided for this piece.

Dissidia: Final Fantasy NT Review

by Jason Parker (Ragachak)

Dissidia FF NT - Main Image

Dissidia shines down from the heavens. But is it glory we see, or destruction?

I was a huge fan of the Dissidia franchise. In the last game, I spent a lot of time playing online as Gilgamesh (yeah, I was that guy). So when I heard that Dissidia was coming back in the form of Dissidia Final Fantasy NT? Oh boy, you couldn’t keep me away from watching the footage, streams, anything I could get my hands on. The greatest heroes, villains, and dads (Jecht gets his own slot: he’s dad of the year) come back to clash. Whether they serve Materia or Spiritus (Good or Evil respectively), you can team up with whomever in online gameplay. The story, such as it is, groups specific characters together to do battle with Manikins (basically soulless clones of characters). However, this title is actually a port; it originally came out back in 2015 in the Japanese Arcade scene, and just now came to the worldwide audience. That explains why the game just feels empty. Despite having 20+ characters, a host of cosmetic unlocks for characters, icons, titles, and weapons, there’s simply not a lot to do in the game.

Dissidia FF NT - Main Menu

Choose your destiny.

The main screen of the Dissidia is neatly divided up into categories that are easy to follow. First is Options, which is pretty clear as to what it does. That’s where your video/audio settings are, including subtitles, unless you want to change it to Japanese/English audio (that’s done on the very first screen). Treasure is next, and that’s where you activate your winnings from battle. As you level your account/characters, you unlock Treasures, which give you a few cosmetic items, from skins, titles, battle themes, weapon skins, and avatars. So yes, Virginia, this game has lootboxes. But fear not! You cannot (repeat cannot) spend real money on them. They are only attained in battle, so while it is a grind, it’s not a retail game with real money lootboxes. However, spending Gil/GP on costumes/music is very grind intensive. They’re all expensive, so unless you’re winning matches, you’re gonna be in for a bad time. From there, we go to Online Modes. You can either play Ranked Match (Solo), Ranked Match (Party), or Custom Match. Custom Match doesn’t appear to let you play against AI with friends online, just other players. Its options are otherwise solid, with Connection Strength, Region, Playstyle (Casual, Hardcore, Training), and a max of 24 people occupying it (since it’s 3 person teams), that’s fairly robust.

Dissidia FF NT - Story

Behold! Cutscenes! I mean … story!

Here’s the part that disappointed me the absolute most: Dissidia: Final Fantasy NT’s Story Mode. The story is wonderful, and it’s well-told; but in order to actually fight a single battle in the story, you have to go through a minimum of six cutscenes. That’s not counting if you check out both branches, which would put it around nine cutscenes. You also can’t skip ahead and see if it’s a cutscene or a fight.  Another thing you unlock as you play against AI or other people is “Memoria”, which unlock the cutscenes and battles for the Story Mode. These battles, when you get to them, have specific characters in mind. That part doesn’t bother me. What bothers me is that I spent several play sessions in the game and did not get a single battle, only beautifully crafted cutscenes. To their credit, they are lovely, in visual and audio quality, but this is not what I was expecting when I saw Dissidia had a story mode. I would at least like an Arcade Mode, where it’s random groups of characters duking it out till the end. This hurt me, it hurt me a lot.

Offline Modes are next: Gauntlet Mode and Sparring Match. The Gauntlet is as its name implies. You pick a team and control one character, with two AI helpers. This mode has a separate ranking from the ranked level. You start in Bronze, and as your team wins matches, it goes up in ranks, from Bronze E through A, then into Silver, Gold, Platinum, Mythril. You get it. You get to pick your matches from pre-determined groups/ranks, and every match beyond Gold is absolutely insane. As you grow in power, so does your team, and they’ll act smarter with each rank up. These matches feel very bland after a while though. You either stomp or get stomped, there’s no in-between. Then finally, the Tutorial. This tutorial is very useful, and you should definitely spend time in it. But now that we’ve talked modes, let’s talk mechanics.

Dissidia FF NT - Grind

This is the result of my hard work!

There are two primary game modes: Core Matches and Standard Matches. The goal of Core Matches is to destroy your opponents Crystal before they destroy yours. Pretty simple stuff. The Standard Match features a 3v3 battle where the goal is to eliminate the other team. Each team can have three deaths, and when that is met (judged by the Red/Blue bar at the top left), victory is attained. In addition to this, the match also has Crystals/Cores. They randomly spawn, and you have to target them by tapping L2/R2 at the same time. They only take damage from HP attacks, so break them to fill a gauge. When the gauge is full, you hold your touchpad to charge the summon. Multiple players can do this to make it go faster, but you are vulnerable while it happens. Each Summon has its own attack and benefits, and amazing summoning sequence. You get one assigned to you at random, and you unlock the others (of course) through grinding the game. You might get lucky and get the one you want, but that is not really likely. I was hoping for Alexander or Odin but got Ifrit, then Leviathan. When playing online, each person on your team picks from the pool you have as a group, and one is picked randomly.

Dissidia FF NT - So many colors

Shall I give you despair? Oh, that’s just a blur of colors. It can get a little hectic. Still fun though!

My favorite part though is the actual combat. You have a Bravery Attack (Circle), HP Attack (Square), EX Attacks (Triangle), and a Jump (X). L2/R2 are your targeting buttons, all very easy to remember. Bravery Attacks also have a direction attached, and each one (including neutral) have different functions. Kefka’s a good example. Kefka’s neutral is “Blizzaga Blitz”, his grounded down+circle is “Core Decoy”, and up+circle in the air is “Snap-Crackle Thundaga”. These are all very different attacks with different ranges, properties, and movement speeds. These moves deal damage to opponents, but cannot KO them. Only your HP Attacks can do that. Once someone has “Broken!” on them, you can work on hitting them with HP attacks to Incapacitate them. That counts as a death for the team. Some of these HP Moves are still useful anytime, but it might be better to focus on landing combos with your Bravery Attacks. You have one equipped at a time, and you have to level the character up to get them. Kefka’s list, continuing the example, is Havoc Wing, Hyperdrive, Trine, and Forsaken. I highly recommend looking up movelists, to find which one is likely going to work for you. Finally, there are EX Skills, and each character has one. Kefka’s is “Heartless Angel”, which you use to Apply Debuffs to opponents. The longer you charge it, the more debuffs it gives.

Dissidia FF NT - Lag

This perfect moment was taken during an insane amount of lag.

In addition, there are generic Ex Skills, which you unlock through gameplay. These apply buffs/debuffs, from lowering defenses, adding Bravery (Attack Stat), healing, buffing your defenses, pulling people into a clump, you name it. There’s a fair amount of them, so find which works for each character. There are plenty of slots per character to set a variety of builds, for whichever situation you find yourself in. These movesets are what I love about the game. They all feel like they belong to the characters, and don’t tend to spill over to others. For example, Golbez and Kefka are both Marksmen (as opposed to Vanguard, Assassin, or Specialist), and both magic users. However, Golbez uses his dragon, the Shadow Dragon to help him breathe icy doom on his foes. Kefka on the other hand charges incredibly powerful magic and taunts and teases. It’s incredibly important to find who works for you and spend time really playing them in online/offline matches to get their additional powers/find your synergies. However, I’m finding that the game doesn’t feel super balanced. Some characters simply feel overwhelming, like Cloud and Jecht. I’m still learning the game, so there are lots of things I simply am not prepared for yet, like a three mage team focusing me down, and there simply is not enough dodge time/defenses against their onslaught. Despite that, it’s an incredibly fun Arena Battle game. There are so many different playstyles, with at least one hero/villain per game, including Final Fantasy Tactics/XIV. The only games that I did not see a villain for are XI, XIV, XV, Tactics, and 0. I’m hoping that means we’ll see Wiegraf and Ardyn Izunia.

 

Dissidia FF NT - Kefka

You tell ’em, Kefka!

This is my Story: Good (3/5)

Mechanically, Dissidia Final Fantasy NT is incredibly sound. The gameplay is phenomenal, and each character has their own very unique attacks, animations, and abilities. Some of the spell-based characters kind of feel similar, unfortunately, as a lot of their casts are spherical, but even still they have their own special properties. Team composition is important, knowing who is good at what also matters. This is a game that takes a lot of practice (unless you’re Cloud), and you can choose to queue solo for Ranked play, or group with a few friends to go at it online with the best of the best. Visually, it’s also breathtaking. The games sounds, looks, and aesthetics are perfect in every single way. But it’s very threadbare everywhere else. There’s only Ranked play and lobbies, and no regular casual play online without setting up/finding a lobby. Then there are almost no offline modes, and you have to grind to play the story.

Why must you grind to play the story? What does that gain us, other than waste our time? I love this game, I love what it represents, but I feel like something is missing. With such a huge cast, you better go online, look up who does what, find out who might be the most fun and focus on them as you have to unlock new abilities for your HP Attacks and EX Skills. I’m grateful you can’t spend money on the lootboxes though, and you get them through leveling characters, but it’s just … it’s such a slog. If you’re into Arena fighters and love the Final Fantasy universe, this game is for you. But be warned, it’s basically only an online game with a “story” mode. I hope that’s all fleshed out later. If I were judging this solely by how well it plays, it would easily be a 5/5, one of the best fighters I’ve played this year. But everything that surrounds this wonderful experience is seriously lackluster. These are things I think can be addressed in future updates, but right now, it’s just like walking through molasses.

Note: A game key was provided for review purposes.

Ancestors Legacy Announces Their Release Date

Ancestors Legacy, the history-inspired, turn-based Real Time Strategy title comes closer to its launch date. It is scheduled for May 22nd, 2018 for both Windows PC and Xbox One. The Windows version will be distributed through digital outlets such as Steam, with a boxed retail version available in select countries. The Xbox version will hit online stores on the same day. The eager warriors do not need to wait for the way until the release in May, as the Open Multiplayer PC Beta is launched on Steam today! Ancestors Legacy is now open for everyone to try out the multiplayer on its own. All four nations represented in the game are playable within this beta version, on one of the three maps, from 2-6 players (1v1, 2v2, 3v3). Players can be accompanied by AI, or other players online (friends, or in the lobby).

Ancestors Legacy can also be pre-ordered as of today. Fans joining the pre-purchase may look forward to receiving a full digital Collector’s Edition of Ancestors Legacy, containing the original soundtrack composed by Adam Skorupa and Krzysztof Wierzynkiewicz, and a digital artbook put together by the art team at Destructive creations. This pre-order offer is topped by a 10% discount off its price, set at 39.99 EUR / 44.99 USD – the same price as for the final base game (without the DLC) in the PC digital version.

Conquer Online Runes Expansion Gift Pack Giveaway

Conquer Online Runes Expansion will be released in February, the power of mystic runes will bring tremendous change to CO world! To celebrate the release of new expansion. The Conquer Online (http://co.99.com/) team joins hands with OnRPG to provide wonderful gift packs for new players to challenge numerous martial artists in the world of Conquer!

Conquer Online Runes Giveaway

Conquer Online is a free PVP MMORPG which features Free to Play, Skill to Win. In Conquer Online, you can choose from 9 awesome classes and become a martial arts master. While exploring the ancient oriental fantasy world, you also can make friends with other players all over the world, organize a guild, and even get married. Complete quests, challenge fierce monsters, enhance gear and finally you’ll become the conqueror of the world of fighters. Since launch, Conquer Online has attracted over 10 million players worldwide. Join and prove yourself on the world-class stage now!


Players will get a set of level 15 super +3 equipment (B) to start the new journey, there will also be gifts including EXP Balls, Dragon Balls and + stones to support a new player.

New Reunion Box:

EXPBall x 10; EXPPotion x 10; PrayingStone(M) x 1; +3Stone x 7; +3SteedPack x 1; DragonBall x 5; 1000 CPs(B); 30 Day ImperialRobe(B); New Rebirth Box.

Novice Equipment Pack:

Open to get a set of level 15 Super +3 equipment (B) of your class.


How to Redeem Your Gift Code:

  1. Sign up for FREE on our Event Page (https://coevent.99.com/runesgiftpacks/)
  2. Download the game and login to create a new character. Click START TO PLAY CO on the event page to download client.
  3. Come back to the Event Page (https://coevent.99.com/runesgiftpacks/). Submit your character info and your gift code to claim your gift packs!
  4. Login to the game and claim your prizes from your in-game mailbox by clicking on the mailbox button on the top right corner of the game screen.

Note: Event takes place from February 6th to March 5th (PST). One gift code per account per IP. This code is only available for new players who have successfully registered during the event.

Note: Unfortunately ad blockers may interfere with our site. If you have any issues claiming a key, please disable them and try again.

First Person Brawler Sky Noon Coming to Steam Early Access

Independent game developer Lunar Rooster, partnered with Reverb Triple XP have announced today that their first-person multiplayer brawler Sky Noon will launch into Steam Early Access in Q2 2018. Set in the Wild West, Sky Noon promises to be a unique, refreshing first-person experience, taking the fight high into the sky. Taking place in a reinvented Wild West universe where the frontier floats among the clouds, powerful cartels crave to control the most precious resource in the west: water. Players take the role of hired gunslingers that battle opposing fighters across floating islands in the sky. The game does not feature health meters. Instead, players eliminate enemies using super-powered compressed air weapons, sending them flying far away! Grappling hooks and lassos must be used to prevent players from plummeting to their doom.

“What we love about Sky Noon is how it really feels like a first person brawler and that’s a refreshing take on the shooter genre,” states Ted Lange, Executive Producer for Reverb Triple XP. “Sky Noon really has that unique and elusive fun factor that’s hard to find in most multiplayer games and that’s a testament to the clear direction of fun design the Lunar Rooster development team has focused on when making Sky Noon.”

Regions of Ruin Review

By Andrew Skelton (Outfoxed)

Kingdom and Kingdom: New Lands are a special kind of game to me.  They’re beautifully simplistic by design, but massively complex by nature.  So when Regions of Ruin was announced as adding open world RPG content to the formula, as well as skill-based combat, you better believe I was intrigued and I was happy to review the game when the opportunity arose.  It’s actually taken me a while to do a cohesive preview, since the game has had a significant amount of polish between its first foray into Early Access to present day, so please, join me on a trek to reclaim the land in the name of the dwarves you lead.

Regions of Ruin Review Screenshot

My Kingdom for a Wagon

After learning about the horrible fate of the land, your lone dwarf runs across a caravan master with a broken wagon.  This is where the tutorial begins, and you’re guided towards learning how to interact with objects, how to equip yourself with weapons and armor, and how to dispatch enemies.  That’s right, unlike Kingdom, you are responsible for most of the combat that takes place.  You can also sneak attack monsters which does massive damage,

You’re also introduced to the second part of the game: resource collection and management.  In order to fix the wagon, you collect wood.  Once you return to the caravan, you’re off to your main encampment, which serves as the hub for most activity in the game.

Regions of Ruin Review Screenshot

Getting Perspective

The main camp starts with nothing more than a campfire.  A few NPCs are already there, and you’ll pick up your first quests of the game.  Most of the quests I encountered were either to rescue a fellow dwarf or drive off some sort of goblin/kobold/orc/troll mob terrorizing the countryside.  You can also develop the camp further with various upgrades such as storage, a smithy, a tavern, and more.  Each building has a variety of benefits, such as crafting new weapons and armor at the blacksmith, or getting coins and recruiting followers at the tavern.  All of the buildings can be upgraded for increased effect, too.

Once the handy townsfolk told me where to find some resources (after all, a camp needs things like lumber and stone to grow, right?) it was off to the map screen.  Initially, your sphere of travel is limited, but by spending food, you can increase where you can travel by scouting out the land.  The map didn’t seem like much to me, at first, until you realize how little you reveal with every search.  What seems like a small and simple game suddenly gets a whole lot more expansive when you get an idea of how large its world is.

Regions of Ruin Review Screenshot

Control-nan the Barbarian

While it can be played a variety of different ways, Regions of Ruin was very much designed for keyboard-only gameplay.  In fact, controller support is very rudimentary and may as well be non-existent.  That’s one of the major problems I have with the game currently — the game feels like it would play amazingly using a controller, but it’s simply just not feasible.  Still, the keyboard controls for movement and interaction and accessing the various menus like inventory or the map are intuitive enough.  Where it becomes a lot more muddy is when it comes to the combat controls.  If we’re going off of default schemes, left arrow is your basic attack, while right arrow is your power attack.  Up arrow is throwing weapons, and down arrow is block.

My problem with the scheme is likely just a mental thing, I’ll admit.  When I’m facing left, my brain wanted left arrow to be the basic attack, but when facing right, which you are for a lot of the game, I kept expecting right arrow to be such.  Using W for jump when most games use spacebar also took a lot of practice to get used to.  Thankfully, it doesn’t take long to get used to, but again, I really wish there was full-fledged controller support for this title.

Regions of Ruin Review Screenshot

Skills to Pay the Builds

As you slay enemies and complete quests, your head dwarf levels up.  Every level (that I found at least) gives you one stat point and one skill point to assign.  Your three stats are strength, dexterity, and constitution.  At the most simple level, these stats do exactly what you think: Strength increases your damage; Dexterity increases your critical hit rate; and Constitution increases your health.  Skills are much more diverse, because you have four different skill lines you can invest in, and they have a lot more skills in them than the simplicity of three stats.  For example, learning skills from the block tree will obviously help you block better, but you can also unlock the ability to shield bash enemies from it, for instance.  Some of the skills are quite game-changing too; triple strike from the Quick Attack tree, for example, was so good that it had to have its damage lowered in a later build.

You’ll also gain a variety of equipment as you play.  In addition to your weapon, you’ll also have armor, a helmet, a shield, a ring, and an amulet.  Even basic equipment can spawn with a variety of modifiers, like boosts to damage or defense.  Magical items are denoted by their color, familiar to most who have played most MMOs (green for uncommon, blue for rare, etc).  Weapons also have different effects depending on their type.  Swords tend to deal less damage, but have a higher critical hit rate and greater critical damage.  Hammers punch through enemy armor with ease, dealing more damage to those  types of foes.  While it can be useful to have multiple weapon types available, it’s nice there’s such a variety.

Regions of Ruin Review Screenshot

Kingdom Come

So, having said how much of a fan of Kingdom I am, does Regions of Ruin compare?  Well, yes and no.  It definitely captures the aesthetic, and thematically it’s very similar.  However, Kingdom’s strength was its simplicity.  Regions of Ruin definitely adds a lot to the formula, but falls short in several ways.  It may have just been the amount I played, but I never once had my encampment attacked by angry hordes of nightmare creatures.  Kingdom management meant paying coins to upgrade and letting the workers do their thing, rather than Region’s method of  gathering tons of materials and sending out workers to gather more.  You didn’t even do the fighting in Kingdom, instead relying on your archers to defend your walls.

That being said, I keep finding myself coming back to play Regions of Ruin because it has that certain addictive flavor.  I wanted to explore more, find more dungeons and camps and strange forests and caves.  I wanted to see if I could take down a troll with the limited, less-than-optimal equipment I had.  I wanted to learn the lore by finding the journal pages scattered across the land.  That’s one thing Regions of Ruin does very well, in fact:  it makes you want to play just a little longer.

Note: A game key was provided for review purposes.

Regions of Ruin Screenshots: