This is a good game, but it's a little over-complicated in terms of its mechanics. In particular, there are too many different kinds of damage. This means you have to hold on to (and micromanage the use of) an insane variety of armour and weapons in order to be effective in battle. As a corollary, it means the only sane defence investment is "dodge", since it's the thing which is effective against the broadest form of attack. Even then, there are a few effects, like "paralysis", which severely unbalance the mechanics.
Reviews for "Wondrous Lands"
DLord2 responds:
Thank you! Yes, agree that it is specific game. By the way there is an enchant for equip versus effects like paralyzed.I
I'm really liking the game. There seems to be some difficulty bumps, but then I've just dived into hardcore.
I'm sold on the graphics, the icons are simple and readable.
You lose out on the GUI for character sheets though. I think as a rule of thumb, if changing something on one sheet would change things on another sheet, then those sheets should be view-able together. It's more important to be able to see the individual character stats and spellpower when changing equipment, then being able to change the equipment of all the characters on the same sheet.
DLord2 responds:
Thank you for your feedback. Very interesting point.
It's a nice game, but I think the game will be more enjoyable if at the beggining the player can chose his class and distribute himself the stat points. It's too random and I need to restart a lot for making a good team. Worse I don't have the 3 class I want each time. I don't need Energy for my 2 hands specialist, I want him to be pure physical. The game is nice, but I have little action in battles. Would be cool if I can chose what the heroes will do as a RPG, or at least disable some elements abilities to make the odd of casting the good ability (ex.: trees hate my fire arrows, but I can hardly trhow one if I am lucky) stronger for some vulnerabilities.
DLord2 responds:
Thank you for your feedback!
Yes, it is good point. The game is designed this way(to adapt and to make use of what you have). But I agree, creating custom heroes is good alternative. Also we wanted appeal to more casual audience by simplifying the party generation process a little.
The same goes about autobattles: we wanted all the important decisions to be made on the global map, while in the fight you can relax and watch how your heroes beat the crap of everyone.
Though we understand that it may be frustrating for a hardcore player who wants as much control and depth as possible.
P.S. When hero decides to cast ability it takes into account enemy resistance. It's not a dominant factor but important one.
It's a good game and is addicting but it really does have flaws. For one, the game feels so rng based in that... I always go through my quests and inevitably reach a point where I straight up don't have the gear needed to kill a given foe. like i'm at level 9, killed the vast majority of foes I can kill either by myself or with a mercenary, and have combed the stores but holy weapons with holy damage in the double digits seem to not exist and dark medium armor for my ranger with double digit dark resistance also seems to no exist without single digit physical armor. secondly, what in the blue monkey hell does each god actually do? Like... I pass by a shrine and see an option to devote to them, but have absolutely no idea what bonuses each gives me or what rules I must follow since apparently you would be penalized for not doing so according to the game info. Shame it seems nowhere in the game do I get ANY information on any of the gods whether talking to npcs or whatever. when I picked a random god I get another quests with absolutely no understanding how to check it which is another thing. I usually don't know how to actually check quest progress. On top of it all, the monsters just feel a lot stronger than they should even on normal sometimes. The monsters appear to be balanced around me using gear that's strong against them but given the first issue mentioned... I simply can't do that. I tried replaying a few times but the same issue always eventually comes up, albeit usually at different points of the game. Finally why on earth did you make it so we can't see the full skill trees on each character before getting the points (but of course we need whatever requisites to unlock them) so I could actually attempt to plan out builds better? I mean I rolled a guy with chaos magic. I expected insane damage eventually but this did not happen. law magic I had no idea what it'd do either until trying it and spending points I can't get back to find out... It's the same for all trees magic or otherwise though. Let us see the perks so we can actually try to create a build intelligently. Oh and what I DID discover though is that many perks seem to be designed for specific weapon types for melee (for example certain perks work only for axes/maces) which only exacerbates the issue of never having the right weapons you need and with limited weapon spawns in the world that are randomized and often either are useless or just not what you need at the moment, it makes it harder. Now all that ranting aside, the game IS simple fun and is addicting. I would've liked more control on what the guys do, but still it was simple and fun. Do make the party run faster in the overworld though please, that'd be nice, and make it so curses eventually wear off. On one run I straight up had a curse forever because blessings seemed to not exist, donating to gods doesn't overwrite it as apparently their blessings don't count, and no npc spawned to remove the curse so the vast majority of the game i was cursed until my inevitable rng induced death from rolling a particularly crappy curse at a bad time. The graphics are simple but not atrocious I suppose and the music isn't so bad. But if I'm missing something here, please do tell me. Also one last thing, is there a timer to beat the game? Because occasionally i got a pop up about the one demon guy trying to break out of his prison though nothing happened yet.
DLord2 responds:
Thank you for the feedback!
Regarding weapons and shops: we had the basic idea of old roguelike games like Crawl or Nethack. You get some items and enemies depening on RNG and you have to work with thigs you get. Sometimes it means not fighting particular enemies at all. When we were balancing the game, we didn't make it so you can consistantly kill everything on the map. It may be possible, but it's not required. You only have to be strong enough to kill Vorag.
I agree that in this game you have less information that you wanted and some of that was by design initially (so you have to check out different gods to see what they have to offer and the same with abilties). This decision has it's upsides and downsides obviously. We also may put better descriptions for magic skill categories to be more clear what you can find inside.
Regaring your questinos: yes, we're going to increase world travelling speed in the future. Also there is a timer, but it's pretty big one.
I really enjoyed this game, it's one of the funniest games here, but I gave it only 3.5 stars because of some major flaws that I found quite annoying:
- First of all, travel speed. Walking around that slow is extremely boring. Also, adding the possibility to scroll the map to see what's there around the characters would let the player to plan his routes and avoid slowly exploring the map just to find out you have to slowly walk back.
- Please, add the possibility to customize your characters, choose your class, race, and distribute the points freely. Almost every time I play I have to reload the team building screen because I can't assemble a team that suits me. If I get a mage and archer, I cannot find a warrior, and vice versa; or when I get two nice chgaracters, I get a warrior with high energy and low toughness, or a mage with high strength and low energy. That's really annoying and it's the major flaw of this game.
- The game becomes utterly impossible at around level 7-9. I always find myself stuck with enemies I cannot defeat. And the timer is too fast.
- I'd like the full skill trees to be visible from the beginning, it would allow me to plan the characters' builds better.
- Random loot is fine, but when it's too random it becomes annoying. I don't like to get a level 5 piece of equipment after defeating three lvl 9 giants.
Besides that, the game is quite enjoyable, thanks for the good work ;)
DLord2 responds:
Thank you for your feedback! Regarding a travel speed we increased it with the update few days ago. Also dropped items are better if your party is weaker than the enemy and the dropped items will be worse if you are stronger than the enemy.