Without knowing what Disciple 1 or 2 was or reading any review or even bothering to look at the images on the Steam page I for whatever reason purchased this game.
As it turns out Disciple 3 Renaissance is a turn based 4x type game with turn based combat with middle earth (high elf) type armies.
In fact it’s not even remotely close to what I thought it might be (an RPG) it turns out to be a part of the one genre I can’t stand to play.
If this game is like one it is like the incredibly popular Heroes of Might and Magic series which as of writing this is on their sixth installment (over 30 years keep in mind).
So these games work like this. In an overworld you get resources to build up armies. Your armies move around the map taking over territories that will give more resources. You face off against in a hexablock based battlefield in which you need to use the roles of your units to beat out your opponent.
Each block can be hit from six directions. So it becomes important to create flanks and protect weaker heroes. As well there is a cover system in which your heroes will take reduced damage from ranged attacks if behind someone.
This kind of game features overworld magic in which you can use a magic resource to damage an enemy army before you engage them. This is used to give serious advantages in combat.
In the overworld management often you are building structures to help boost the gathering of some sort of resource or creating structures to build various units.
The game feature your leaders who often play some epic role like a rogue, warrior, healer, or mage leading a band of various class types. Each hero class unit gains experience which they can sink into attributes of their choice.
This game features four campaigns. A short tutorial campaign, an Empire (human) campaign, a dark lords type campaign, and an elven campaign. The four campaigns combined will amount to about 40 hours of gameplay, not too shabby.
On the plus side this series does have a fairly good story. Obviously if you hate high fantasy you will hate this. But it does make an effort to tell the events of a single story from three different view points. This is a very strong feature for this genre.
But like I said, I really don’t like this genre period.
I’m not entirely sure why this game was called “Renaissance” when it has little or nothing to do with the Renaissance period. There was nothing in this game to hook you in, it’s sort of just the same stuff.
Make sure to not add this game to your bucket list because it simply doesn’t do enough to attract people to this genre.
Originally this game was called “Elemental Fallen Enchantress.” But for some reason (probably marketing) it was changed to simply Fallen Enchantress.
You will find a lot of parallels between this game and Civilization 4. This is because a Civ4 designer who made a fantasy based mod for Civ 4, was the lead developer for Fallen Enchantress.
So upon loading up the game and before even playing the game I click on options. The game has more options and customization than any game I’ve ever played. There are no less than 9 different sound configurations… most games offer 3.
For this reason you will find the sound quality is amazing in this game. You will love the music and love the sound effects.
The story of the game is largely unimportant. But as the story goes there are good guys and bad guys each trying to vye for control of everything. The good guys often band together but sometimes attack each other to try and unify power. Sometimes the good guys will ally with bad guys to move up in the world.
There is one giant evil that has surmised the world that if you defeat you will win.
The game borrows from so many different games it’s not fit. By doing this it creates a brand new game worth talking about.
From Lords of Magic or Heroes and Might and Magic you have the idea of hero units within armies. Each hero unit can level up gaining specialized traits. Each hero specializes into one of eight hero jobs including beggar, soldier, and mage
After you gain so many levels you can specialize in a different kind of path including warrior, assassin, mage, and rogue.
Each city can also specialize. Each city with specialize in either money, army, or research. Over time as the cities level they will further specialize in these in different ways.
So like Civilization you build cities which build buildings that boost stuff and you get armies and the ability to build more cities.
However unlike Civilization you tie your military units into 3-9 man parties that will go to war together.
With your military you can move around the map. There are treasures that are either rewards or punishments. Upon clicking on one of the treasures on the map you might get gildar (the currency in the game), equipment or get ambushed.
The game also has a very unique and chaotic point in which you can do quests. These quests are offered by NPCs around the map that will tell you to go kill something. It gets chaotic because often your quests will have you go into enemy territory in which case you can get declared war upon.
Diplomacy pretty much works the same as Civilization. People declare war on you at the drop of a dime and only make peace with you after you have caused devastation upon them.
In every single one of these games there is a distinct defenders advantage. In this game it’s not really that big. Upon attacking a city there are a few extra civilian units pushed forward who don’t really do much.
As well there are constantly aggressive barbarian type mobs spawning throughout the game that you will have to deal with. Of course you want to engage them because they can level your heroes up.
The game is INSANELY customizable. The game has Steam Workshop as well. You can design your own units (based on research you have found). You can create your own hero (including type, stats, looks, and abilities).
All of this is uploadable to the Steam Workshop… except people don’t seem to be doing it. Despite all things there isn’t a giant mod community around for this game. Don’t expect to see any full Warcraft mods or Mario world mods because they just won’t exist (unless you make them yourself).
There are a few clear negatives to this game.
The first is some really odd UI options. My most hated is how units hide in cities. I spent about 2 hours missing two full armies having no idea where they were. The army manager screen vanishes these armies once they enter cities.
Once inside the cities you have to click a + button to individually move them out. Fine for one character but six is just tedious.
Another major problem is that the game has stablization issues. Some people report the game crashes. I had this odd problem where some kind of prompt kept running in the background and disturbing my gameplay.
At the discount price of $9.99 it’s time to jump into Bethesda’s Brink!
So what’s Brink?
In a nut shell Brink is a co-op time based objective based shooter with an open world and non-linear maps. The game can be played solo, online (drop in games), and against other players.
The game features a 10-mission campaign in which you can play as either side.
If you’re thinking of a game that this is like, think of PAYDAY: The Heist…. with more maps… and better graphics.
Actually that’s not fair, they’re not exactly better graphics. They’re different graphics. PAYDAY went for realistic graphics and hit the yonder side of the uncanny valley. BRINK went for goofy big heads and odd shaped bodies which are just a little more cartoony.
You have four classes in the game. Out of the four there are only two you will want to play as, soldier and medics. Pretty well every other class is functionally useless.
It’s not that they are useless, more that the computer plays them better. I stress this because it is almost impossible to fully populate a game with people. At best you will get 2 people. The game unfortunately never took off and just doesn’t have a lot of people playing it.
It’s possible when this goes on sale against you might get some games in with people… but honestly it’s rare.
It seems like a game that you have to play with friends in order for it to be fun. But I’ll be honest, even then it won’t be REALLY fun.
One of the big problems I had was the non-linearity of map designs with linear objectives. Now I’m not asking for narrow corridors but dear god some of these maps are so retardedly hard to figure out.
I was playing on a map in which your opponents spawn point and your spawn point are within seconds of each other. In between is a giant area you have to get to in which the only entrances are small vent ducts you have to duck into and find out exactly where they are.
From a map design perspective defense just need to camp out these entry points to win. It’s so retardedly dumb. But that’s if you can find it. In one scenario I spent all of my 15 minutes trying to find a vent.
The hard difficulty is barely accomplishable in a fresh game. You have to grind out your levels to get upgrades in order to make your avatar strong enough to beat these missions.
Now it’s not all doom and gloom. It’s not a game I will be recommending but in the least Bethesda showed they cared a little. Every single mission has a fully voiced fully animated introduction and two closings indicating a story basis and some sort of characters that you might like.
This can be compared to games like Killing Floor, Left 4 Dead, and The Heist in which you just start off in the middle of a scenario.
The game concept has promise as an alternative to the Call of Duty model, but this game simply does not execute it right.
No matter how on sale this game is, don’t get it. It will simply be a waste of time and money.
I decided to trudge into a game I bought but haven’t played… I wanted something that felt very indie… so I went with Bastion.
But as it turned out it wasn’t as indie as it looked as it was published by Warner Brothers Studios… which means Warner Brothers officially owns all of the characters in this game… interesting.
The Brief: The Indie Craze
Somewhere after the release of the PS2 and the release of the Xbox the caliber of games severely decreased. Studios started focusing on creating lush and amazing graphics and moved away from inventing new gameplay to inventing new polygons.
It’s only in recent years that they have moved back to creating good games with new gameplay elements. It was an entire era where people like Peter Molyneux and Richard Garriot could go on a tirade about how bad video games were… and be right. Today these guys just sound like douchebags.
But during this odd era you saw endless numbers of sequels were shying people away from gaming… that is the hardcores.
As people with disposable income were jumping into MMORPGs with their subscription fees the large casual base was stuck with very crappy games.
The result was the beginning of development for indie games. When Xbox 360 introduced their indie arcade this allowed room for many indie developers to grow.
Xbox Indie Arcade was notorious for producing crap. But then there was a sudden rise in amazing platformer games. People were jumping into these games like crazy.
Whereas a standard game cost $60 and lasted about 10 hours, these cost about $15 and lasted 2 hours. The first of these was LIMBO a game about a child who is trying to survive limbo so that he could go to heaven.
The result of its success was endless retro feeling indie games. Studios were coming out of nowhere, tones of one and two-man teams. These studios were independent and had been working on these games for quite some time.
This indie trend largely died a little after the launch of Minecraft. The indie games coming out around Minecraft are largely the end of independent studios plopping up and creating games and supplanted by people putting games on Kickstarter in hopes of getting groundswell of support for their game.
Synopsis
Bastion follows the story of a boy who wakes up in a world in which no one is alive. It is narrated by Logan Cunningham who sounds like a badass old Texan (he’s actually a black man).
As the character does things Cunningham constantly narrates exactly what he is doing as he is doing it. It’s a design element in which after smashing so much with one weapon he will talk about that weapon.
As you go through the game you start finding and rescuing new characters. They go to a place called the bastion… as in the last bastion of humanity.
The goal is to get “cores” to this place in order to power it up so that humanity can survive.
As the hero goes around society he finds places are in very poor condition and finds very few survivors.
Instead he finds various gangs of monsters have inhabited the world.
To beat these monsters he has a variety of weapons. The game features two weapon’s slots with the choice of up to 12 different weapons. There is also a special attack slot that allows for a very powerful weapon with a consumable based attack.
Each weapon can be upgraded based on picking up items and a special currency. The special attack can also be selected from a group of items you pick up.
There is also an odd difficulty scaler. As you go through the game you can make enemies more powerful in exchange for more experience and more money. Money of course once again is used for upgrading things.
Experience is used for unlocking brews. These alcoholic concoctions don’t really do anything actively. Instead it is just a way of showing off passive stat increases or special attack bonuses.
I tried taking some screenshots of the game, but all of them ended up like this:
Just such an odd thing to happen.
The game is worth about 5 hours of gameplay if and only if you complete all of the challenges as well.
The side challenges are used to unlock rewards but represent some relatively hard things to do. I actually skipped these myself and knocked an hour off of the game, they simply did not interest me.
I think the problem to me is that the difficulty scaler ends up being kind of useless. If you increase the difficulty early on the later part of the game becomes jokably easy… unless you keep the scaler on.
If you don’t put the difficulty scaler on at all anywhere in the game it is still jokably easy.
I don’t mind difficulty being hard for being a challenge… but this game presents it in terms of earning rewards.
It’s not a large enough flaw to hate the game however. It is very well designed and at $15 regular price, being on sale is well worth buying.
I’d recommend this game full heartedly to anyone that is looking to burn a few hours.
Torchlight 2′s regular price is quite low, $20. However I received it at 66% off for an $8 value! This is by far one of the cheaper games I’ve reviewed and price is an important indicator in these reviews.
So how will Torchlight 2 fair?
The Brief: Why Torchlight?
It seems odd that such a low budget and low cost game would make such a big splash in the gaming market. But it did.
Why? You might ask.
Back in 1996 Blizzard Entertainment made Diablo. It was a hack and slash, action adventure, dungeon crawling game. The beauty of Diablo was that all dungeons were completely randomized meaning that every single playthrough was going to be a unique experience. There was also a random loot generator to further this.
Diablo’s amazing commercial success along with Warcraft 2 made Blizzard Entertainment a household name and gave them the reputation for quality that they still have today.
Various other dungeon crawlers would emerge to try and compete with Diablo but by and far people were still happy only playing Diablo. The release of Diablo 2 was another important step in the development of the dungeon crawling game. But once again people were really hard t o stop playing Diablo 2 as even the player versus player in this game was vastly superior to other games.
So when Diablo 3 was set to release in 2012 it was the single most anticipated game of the year (yes more than Mass Effect 3, Hitman Absolution, and Max Payne 3 combined).
Five minutes into the game I’m holding up my local merchant
But Diablo 3′s launch was completely botched. Initially people playing the game received an error based on the online Battle.net play. Diablo 3 turned out to be a very big grind in which people would choose to spend real world money on money making gear rather than use the best possible items they have in the game. Diablo 3, failed.
It was for good reason of course. Diablo 3 went through three different development teams. The first team left Blizzard to make Hellgate London. The second team was laid off for their inability to make progress on the title. The third team finished the game, packaged it and shipped it.
So when Diablo 3 failed people were looking for an alternative. Torchlight 2 was it. The few fans of the Torchlight series could not stop talking about how amazing the game was. It had everything Diablo 3 needed and none of it’s weaknesses. A lot of this has to do with the fact that most of the development team for Torchlight were former Blizzard employees.
On top of that Torchlight 2 had the price benefit. While Blizzard was more than happy to charge $60 for a game that ought to have cost pennies on the dollar they sought to charge full price. Torchlight 2 had won the hearts and minds of gamers.
But is it any good?
Synopsis
Dungeon crawlers are not new to me, they’re just not a game I often enjoy playing. I have played a few Dungeon Sieges and one of the three Diablos. But I haven’t really seen a need to play these kind of games.
Torchlight 2 starts off with selecting one of four classes. There is one melee class and three ranged classes. However all classes can wield every weapon in the game so you could do those weird things like make a hunter who only uses staves.
As far as customization goes you can choose gender, name, hair color, facial expression and eye color. Generally speaking for this sort of game that’s a lot of customization. Generally you just play one archetype of one of the hero types.
After selecting your character you are brought into the world of Torchlight. A battle was fought over some evil demon and the heroes won. However the heroes from the last game are all seen struggling against a new greater evil and are all mortally injured and unable to pursue him. Luckily these new heroes have arrived (you).
You have two buttons, left click and right click. Left click is your non-mana using attack that deals less damage. Right click is your mana using ability that you can choose. For the hero I chose I could choose between a really potent single target attack, one that bounced to hit multiple targets or one that shot in a line. You can also bind attacks to your toolbar and assign them from 1-9… but in this sort of game generally the fewer mana costing attacks you have… the better.
As you level up you will be able to invest points in getting passive talents or upgrading your magic ability. You can also invest points into a Stats tab to gain more health, mana, dodge, or armor. As well they all increase damage in some manner or the other.
The game works in terms of quests and dungeons. You get a quest to go to a dungeon, you complete the dungeon, you complete the quest.
Along the way however you will run into quest givers who will give you dungeons along the way to complete. As well there are “overworld” bosses all over the place who will give you special loot.
Dungeons have degrees of intrigue. There are many that will have puzzles for you to solve. My favorite was a slider puzzle.
Exploring gives it’s rewards as well. Exploring I was able to find “challenges” in which I have to kill multiple enemies at once for large scale rewards. As well exploring you will find secret areas full of loot.
The game has five difficulty levels. I mention this because their difficulty only has to do with how much grinding you are required to do. But seemingly I explore every single nook and cranny of a map and so I played on the hardest difficulty. The hardest difficulty much like Diablo 3 just meant more grinding, no actual difficulty increase as gear could overcome any boss.
However there is one difficulty mode that made it challenging, Permanent Death. This mechanic in Diablo made sense because you would save and then just go back to your save. In this game your saving is less frequent and so permanent death becomes very hard to deal with.
Much like every single RPG game as of late there is a pet. The pet provides moderate damage tanking, some damage, and can carry inventory. On top of that there is a neat “send to town” ability that means you can keep playing while he is doing his work.
Additionally your dog can be geared with dog tags. Another feature is to feed him a type of fish that you fish in a fishing pool. This fish will change your pet into an enemy type and give it some sort of buff.
The multiplayer in the game works like Diablo 2. You enter someone’s world but don’t have to play with them, it’s entirely an option. Honestly a lot of the times I would just enter people’s worlds so that I could farm their bosses and steal their loot.
The game’s play length is roughly 20 hours for a single playthrough with an additional 30 hours to get to level cap (Level 100).
Strengths
Replay Value
Intense Boss Fights
Highly Customizable
New Story Plus
After finishing the game the first time I thought “I’d like to play online next time as a different hero.” So I started up a second game with online play. It’s rare in this day and age that after finishing a game that I think of anything else but to delete it off of my computer and never play it again. This game gave enough value for me to openly admit I’m now a tab bit interested in Diablo 3.
And just like that, there was no enemy
The boss fights varied and were interesting. Small mistakes on the hardest difficulty yielded maximum punishments. I was honestly surprised going in how much harder the first boss fight was compared to the remainder of the game. I was also surprised that they had unique abilities. The last one of these games I played bosses were just characters. In this one, they were bosses to be dealt with.
Even though you select a class you can play any style you want. Classes only give you bonuses. Although I did end up playing the style it was designed as the thought did come from time to time to pull out a 2-handed weapon and smush my enemies with it.
There are people out there who enjoy grinding and leveling. For such people New Story Plus is available. New Story Plus is basically you replay the game with a leveled hero. It means not starting from the beginning going through all of the new guy content.
Weaknesses
Grindy
Linear Dungeons
Story?
It’s not really a problem with this game, it’s a problem with the dungeon crawler genre. Dungeon crawlers are infamously grindy. This game is not as grindy as Diablo 3 but is significantly more grindy than similar titles. Difficulty setting means how much content you can skip. Games like Borderlands got it right, make the content optional but make it so good people will WANT to do it anyway. Instead what you get is a bunch of “go kill this dungeon” type things.
The genre standard for dungeon crawlers is to have these big giant open dungeons with many twists and turns to explore. This game had linear designed corridors that you could draw a line through. Honestly what mad scientist designed these linear hallways? Was he hoping that heroes could just rush to the leader and kill him? Is that part of this evil plan? Because it sure as hell doesn’t make for fun gameplay. Yes it’s slightly different every time you enter it with mostly randomly generated bosses, but dear god is it ever linear.
Silence of the Lambs meets Torchlight 2
A lot of the time I felt the story got in the way of things. Or maybe I should re-phrase that. It’s like you spend 2 hours crawling through various dungeons getting loot and then story creeps up and tells you that there is stuff going on. Diablo (the original) simply had you crawl through a dungeon and gave you a linear story book with semi-relevant events. This game seemingly has not improved on this formula whatsoever. It’s fine to have a linear storyline in a non-linear dungeon. It however sucks to have a non-linear storyline in a linear dungeon.
Concluding Thoughts
Torchlight 2 isn’t game of the year. It’s not the most exciting game you will ever play.
But it’s well worth it’s money. It is most definitely not an overrated title, it is exactly what people say it is, a good game. At such a low price point it’s hard to resist buying this game and is most definitely a welcome surprise to the mess of bullshit titles available through Steam sales.
The multiplayer community for this game is still alive. You will love jumping into this game and will have problems tearing yourself away from the keyboard.
