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Reviews for "Dark Medieval Times Alpha Demo"

Before I give my review, I wish to elaborate on where my perspective comes from first.

What is a Souls-like?

The term rogue-like started as a way to describe a game as a seemingly "rip-off" of the Rogue game, which used ASCII to detail to depict an RPG world. A journey in Rogue, depended on making the best out of the RNG given to you with meticulous management of hazards and "what-ifs". That potion in your pocket? It might help you, or it might kill you. The future of "rogue-likes" devolved from ASCII and dungeon crawling inspired by AD&D, and turned into a sort of sub-genre applicable to games of all variations, even platformers, and this spawned a "slightly different genre" called "rogue-lites".

Here is where the problem emerges though: These games modernly referred to as "rogue-likes" and "rogue-lites" share very little with their predecessor, and that is because the slew of games that first followed in Rogue's footsteps were similar enough to be considered clones whereas these newer games tried to create their own identity, but were too dependent on using Rogue as a reminder of who they want to be. Doom also inspired a following in the industry that became referred to as the "Doom-Clone", but aspects of later Id Software games like Quake invented the Arena Shooter genre, and have forever inspired the shooter genre.

But even though the Halo and Marathon franchises from Bungie feature space marines with heavy arsenals and no bullshit attitudes, these guys and their respective franchises are never called Doom-Clones, because they have a personality of their own and enough differences in game elements to stand up without the Godfather of shooters. (Doom is not the original FPS, neither is Wolfenstein.) They are still definitive by the sake of a genre, but try not to get lost in comparison to their ancient competitor.

So what is a Souls-like? Imitation is a form of flattery, but it is also limiting to personal freedom and with too much reliance on another person's work, you tend to limit your horizons and your varieties, which is very reflective in this game. The mechanics and design fit a platformer and avert away from standard Souls characteristics, which is a good thing. The mechanics act on their own and help make the game live up to it's own namesake by not being another Souls game...

But the problem here is that the game's style, art, dialogue, story, and character is essentially an emulation of Souls, a blatant emulation at that. Bonfires, undead, miasma, fog are concepts so thoroughly from Souls that the existence of it in this game makes it lose it's personality to a franchise that it clearly isn't, but is trying too hard to feel similar to. Even the gravekeeper fellow I met reminded me immediately of a character from Dark Souls. He tells you to leave him be, and gives you a hammer; similar to Petru of Thorolund giving you a copper coin in hopes it gets you to go away.

The Souls franchise is not defined by it's refilling healing items at checkpoints or the difficulty, any game can have these things if they want; but it feels like to me that this game is very different from Souls games by the inherent fact that it is a 2-D platformer with combat. So it bothers me that it was painstakingly designed to emulate the fashion and style of a Souls game just so it can be relevant to a Genre that I don't think actually exists. This is personal preference, but there is no doubt in my mind that games should try to be themselves. It is one thing to be inspired and to harness the emotions you receive from another experience, and another to try and be that original experience just for the sake of trying to force other people to feel your experience directly.

So for full review now.
The style is a nagging point I had to address, because there is too much Souls in this "Souls-like" and not enough deviation. The mechanics are more unique of a Souls experience, but are otherwise generic platforming tropes, though this is much more tolerable as it isn't a proclaimed "Mario-Like". The mechanics in combat function, but feel very limited and at some times even ineffective or unresponsive. Weapons so far have variety, though that variety feels limited and more controlled in sense of damage versus speed; the bigger more important differences being the abilities attached to the weapons.

Now my biggest gripe.
I rebound my keys in the menu and then started my game, and the bindings had saved and worked on the main menu, but at starting the game it reverted both menu and player controls to the default scheme. I move with WASD, and always will, this is a huge peeve of mine, especially when changing the keys does not actually change the "key prompts" that are shown on screen.

I realize this is an alpha, but my philosophy of dealing with alphas and demos is treating them as fully completed products, as I feel the developer needs the feedback to compare to how they believe it should be in the end. I do not enjoy scoring with stars, but must due to the way the scoring system works. I hope that my review is read and that the criticism will be used constructively, but not in a way that makes me the de facto in the actual development... I'm not that important.

I found this game to be fun and interesting. Even though it is a demo I enjoyed every minute.

Waiting for the full version. I think it will be great! Even this is good enough for a game.

I liked the visual and sounds but don't really have fun from playing. I feel there are lots of things intorduced to the player and player has no idea what they are.

- Fog (death) could be more visible (visible as danger and not jsut another fog).
- I had huge problems with obtaining resources. I thought hammer icon meant I press attack and my character would use hammer to gather resources (I didn't know that you need to equip sword)

Killed the first boss but in the second level I had no idea where to go so I decided to stop playing.

Really good entry into the SoulsBorne-like genre. Solid understanding of what made those games great. Only issues I've got are mechanical.

Dodge has a weird timing, not on the i-frames, but the activation. Same with jump startup and attack windups. I think it has to do with the freeze/delay from the previous action, but I've definitely had a dodge fire from neutral position a full half second after pushing it. Might just be a limitation of the platform, or a personal thing but ::Shrug::. I didn't mess around with block too much, cuz I never do in SoulsBorne games. I'm going to d/l and play the alpha to see if it's just a browser thing. Will update if it changes anything.

Otherwise, looks like it's shaping up to be a good, solid game, even with the issues I was having. Excited to see what comes of it.