Reviews for Decision 3

[ojibwa]

SPOILERS
Found a strange glitch in the last area with the Boss Troll, I'd already beaten the one you can find in The Den and got the ending. Then I continued to play without restarting and went to the last area and found that 2nd Boss Troll and killed it, but the objective to find the troll never triggered (the one to kills the troll did trigger however).

I was able to get around this bug though, by leaving the level (by pressing escape and leaving), and then reentering the level. Once in the level again the objectives to find and kill the boss troll were no longer there, and I could simply find the 3 objectives (during the initial scouting mission for the area), and then leave the area.

I had played through from the start on Hard mode, wasn't that hard really, though I'd experience with the last 3 games. Got to Hard+ mode but decided not to continue. I unlocked all of the equipment and upgraded it to max.

It's nice once you get the bases so that they can no longer be attacked (this can be achieved without upgrading the base defense weapons/militia/factory to max). I had about 26 or so spots for recruits around mid-game, and filled them with nothing but the engineers and civilians that generate 150 & 100 gold.

With I believe 4 bases all unable to be attacked, without having fully upgraded them except for the 1st base at the time I believe (which is easier than the others), I was able to click the Zzz button to sleep through hundreds up days to generate 2000-3000+ Gold per day. Getting the items and upgrades was easy at that point, as was upgrading the bases. Once I figured out a few good areas to check for people to recruit on strolls, the game became pretty streamlined.

I didn't bother comparing if Captains were better than Rangers regarding their respective weapons, but I decided to bring along 6 Rangers using the Commander skill, and they were more than sufficient to help get through all of the late game, using mostly the Minigun, sometimes the Rocket Launcher for groups of fragile enemies, the Poison modification of the Pistol to have enemies (specifically lower ranking Trolls) help you, some Grenades for groups of weaker monsters, and bunch of Mines laid usually when defending an objective. You also get to use the Mines and Grenades for base defense it seems.

There were some nice additions and subtle changes in this iteration if I recall the earlier games correctly. There seemed to still be a bug I recall encountering from earlier games where, when enough gunfire is focused on 1 unit, it appears as though block hitboxes become visible, or something of the sort. It kind of looks like shadows. I think it only happened (rarely) once I'd my 6 Rangers helping me focus fire.

The thing I dread most about these games is being forced into defending the bases, which is why I attempt to make them unable to be attacked as soon as I can. I don't want to spoil how one does that, I'll leave that to the other players.
SPOILERS

[Ziggy79]

Great game with some pretty obvious flaws.

Good stuff:
1.) Lots of hidden stuff, weapons and such.
2.) Different ways to progress.
3.) Many types of nemies.
4.) Hard.

Not so perfect:
1.) Narrative is scarse and uninteresting. Too little story-points and information. (The could be some dialogue or notes, diary-pages etc to collect...)
2.) Too many enemies with insane amount of healt. Battle goes on-and-on.
3.) Micromanagement. If the earlier levels are fortified, where are the hordes coming from? It's boring to go back to the easy stages just to clean them up regularly. Why is there no-one else to shoot down the zombies with a minigun? Why should the hero bother? And yes, I have bought the recruites and updates, but the factories build up the tension.

[crytometraphoba]

great game

[RazgrizBlack]

Fun game as always I actually went back and played the first 2 again before starting this one. Much enjoyed the new content and the use of people as resources even though it did get tedious trying to find all of them. The tower defense is the weak link of the game in my opinion most of the time I just let the zombies into the area then went in and killed them after its a lot more fun that way and it lets u lvl up your weapons. Buying upgrades and equipment was much harder than in previous versions especially at the start of the game it made for a lot of grinding and slow gameplay. A lot of the upgrades for the towers are basically useless I only did the optional upgrades on one so I could get the achievement once u actually have the time and money to complete them u have most likely already secured that area and since I did not even try to repel the enemy but a couple times I didn't even bother with any of them. I actually would suggest since your getting all these soldiers to man the tower and its guns make the guns cpu operated with maybe u only manning one gun of your choice.

As for bugs the bow seems to have some problems I missed a lot with it if your not perfectly center of the target u miss. Also I hade a lot of movement problems either my guy wouldn't move or he wouldn't stop running until I shot the bow again. Also the completion of the game screen after u take over all areas or every time u kill the super mutant zombie guy it always locks up when u click continue and I had to close the game and reopen it.

Overall It was fun took a lot longer to complete than the others much more content in this one but I found a lot of it was kind of useless and no reason to waste time on them however it did the job like all the games u guys make and thanks for making it and letting me play.

[nypiebye]

Excellent game, and a worthy successor to the previous ones. It's easier to view the Decision series as a series of upgrades to a tried and true formula, and that's just fine. The new mechanics introduced in each game add just enough to make the boredom you feel towards the end of the previous game disappear, and altogether add a feeling of originality. The innovative nature of some of this series mechanics (I think the survivor recruitment and camp management is one of the best things so far) make for a few diverse play styles and manage to add an unclassifiable quality to the game.

That being said, the reused assets are kind of a pain - the world map is the same as Decision: Medieval. Even then, I can understand the need, it seems really painful to remap everything every game, and the new mechanics are enough to make it fresh.

The difficulty curve would be better if it ramped up a bit earlier - the early game is almost laughably easy, but in the late game the importance of upgrades and proper strategy can catch you off guard. On that point, this game is one of the few where the starter weapon is actually useful for more than two seconds, in this and Decision: Medieval I procrastinated on some of the other weapons purely because my knife or pistol could literally slaughter hordes of zombies.

On weapons, upgrades and money: the upgrades are decent, but the difficulty curve is so slow but steep that everything except for the zombie-radar thing and hacking are absolutely useless until the last three sectors. The price curve on the early active defensive upgrades is unbalanced, because the early game "defend the outpost" missions only send five or six zombies at you. (I once counted, it took thirty seconds for a single low level zombie to spawn.) And the training missions for soldiers to defend sectors are exorbitantly expensive for an upgrade that is basically the only thing allowing mines to continue without accruing too much threat.

The threat system is a little off balance too - zombies in the early game are such a little threat that the "Threat level" meter doesn't actually mean anything. Then there are the horde invasions, all of which just end up being tedious after a time. That, and the threat level doesn't effect them - I know that technically the zombies are supposed to come from the next sector, but why is my sector being attacked when the threat level in all of the adjacent sectors is zero. It also breaks the balance of game-play and money management - I can't tell you how many times I've gone to pick up a few soldiers from the camp only to find that a derp (technical term) of zombies is waiting patiently outside my outpost to be slaughtered.

As for suggestions for the future? I would make the weapon upgrades more incremental, with more expensive upgrades but more definitive damage steps. Zombies should have more health and damage in the beginning, but in turn give a bit more money. Resources should be used more in general. And as for the outpost defending segments, I would either remove them all together or find a way to make it depend less on the player - personally, I would make it either more tower-defense like, with less interactivity and more upgrades, or I would just find a way to throw the player in there, because as the outpost defense currently is, it's a very big weak point in the game.