Scipio_Africanus 最近的评测

It's a very funny game. The writing is fantastic. It has a very light tone most of the time, despite the world here being quite brutal. The main plot is interesting and gives the player space to learn about the world and investigate deeper into what is going on with the various factions, the conflicts of various peoples.

Early access 9 hours first impressions:

Okay I was a little worried after the first demo that they wouldn't be able to throw enough wrinkles into the system here. I'm a little less worried now after my first big operation.

For Battle Brothers veterans: You remember fighting orc strongholds, goblin encampments, those skeleton dudes with the crazy armor? I encountered a pitched battle that actually felt something like that just now in difficulty, and I got trounced. Honestly it was a pretty hard mission due to the map layout. Other than the layout though, I just came in prepared to mop the floor with them and I was mistaken. That's good to see. I won't just be able to throw my heavy-hitting squad at them and shred them all. They have tools to deal with them and they're using them.

I still have to try more of these harder missions to determine if the AI is doing smart things or it's just throwing out every tool in its toolbox when it has the opportunity, and whether that matters or not for the way the game runs. In battle bros, a lot of the game was designed around not having to worry about how dumb or smart the AI plays since the monsters are a rare enough threat that each fight has to be approached in a particular way. Lindwurms versus Nobles vs Hexen are totally different types of battles and would be approached in a totally different way, which leads to cool gameplay regardless if the lindwurm just kinda trudges at you and the nobles just maintain a formation and move forward.



Update after 34 hours:

Okay, so the AI has some glaring issues, but this is like three days into early access, and it doesn't apply to every enemy AI. It mostly applies to the Rebels.
From what I and others have experienced, the AI has a threat model for your units on the map in relation to what you have. It will try to circumvent weapons that are a threat to it and that would have vision of it. This would be interesting behavior if it didn't do this TO CONCEALED UNITS THAT HAVE NEVER REVEALED THEMSELVES. lol

I think this threat modeling thing applies to bugs and pirates too, but usually only for their heavier units. The grunts want to engage you. The heavier ones want to stay at a safe range from anti tank enemies. I experienced this less with pirates for some reason. Maybe it's just less noticeable because how mobile their vehicles are.

They just released an experimental fix for this so we'll see how it works.

The different enemy factions by easiness:

Bugs: *
Pirates : **
MENACE: *****
Rebels on some of the rescue VIP missions mostly: *******, on the other missions: ****


Some spoilers for late game:

The main threat for MENACE is tankiness, which mostly means your loadout has to change pretty drastically. I bought a shotgun for Darby so she could sneak in and assassinate squads. It worked well. Singh can keep people overloaded easily. My vehicles all have to switch to laser weapons or else they run out of ammo far too quickly. I don't have any laser primaries for my infantry which is a bit sad. I wish I did.
I used to use PPP over shotgun but the PPP was pretty useless against them because of their armor.

MENACE as an interesting enemy threat: I think this might need work? they shoot back, but they aren't terrifying. They're mostly mindless. Once my loadout was fixed, the only real threat was the 3 manned squads who had good range and accuracy stacking on top of each other sometimes and becoming a real threat to my infantry at range.
Everything else was just a bullet sponge. I don't know how to fix this really. I thought they'd be much scarier than the rebels, but often I just find them tedious.

Dis game gud.

The climbing mechanic here is satisfying and requires focus and good placement. The added bits of resources we need to carefully utilize as we play makes the game even better. Creating dinner for the night, taping my fingers when I tear them apart on the mountain face. Trying to carefully manage my pitons on the mountain without breaking them. There's just enough resources here to worry about.

Now, if a player really struggles between checkpoints, they'll have a rough time. I've almost died of hunger and water once or twice when I turned all my water into coffee and only had one meal going up from my last save point. I managed to get up with a tight margin just by quickening my pace on my previous attempts' (I died four times) routes. It's quite nerve wracking when you explore too much and run out of resources, but usually there's something in these little nooks to keep you going forward and make the visit a net positive.

The little cinematic parts are also excellent. The main character is about as singularly focused as a climber could be and because of that, they've been as solitary as one might expect. They greet these moments on the mountain satisfyingly, but it's clear there's a toxically romantic view of climbing as some sort of sacrifice to prove oneself.

Good stuff.

10/10 for me. I really like it.

Good start!

This is a slice of the tactical system of Menace with a little taste of a strategic element coming from the supply, the loadouts, and the mission choices. Before deciding loadouts.

I'm pretty satisfied with how things work currently, but I'm still itching to see:
1. how different environs work, if there are weather systems (if so, how does it affect combat?).
2. How the progression of the squads will feel from the first missions to late game.
3. Some cool mecha units, some spicy wrinkles in how combat plays out. So far I've seen some pretty cool things, like rocket batteries that rarely kill, but cause mass suppression on grouped up units, gun emplacements with heavy armor. jetpack units that actually aren't that scary, but COULD be if a squad behind a wall got suppressed. Combat drugs that fully remove suppression, which makes heavily armored marines incredibly dangerous with the right equipment. I wanna see some tanks, aliens, robots next!

What I really like though is that creep up* and gun is a legitimate strategy in a lot of scenarios. It can backfire when high-powered enemies roll in but it's quite effective versus pirate light infantry. My pointman squad carries combat drugs and heavy armor and great armor shredding primaries and an anti-tank special weapon. They're terrifying to most squads, and with suppressing fire in the back, they can be a great assault troop for an entrenched position.

*I say creep up instead of run because often fog of war is hiding a threat you don't want to run into right away.

Infantry feels capable in this game, and Vehicles feel dangerous, but often can be a liability, which makes for a great balance in battle.

Very cool to make this kind of thing. I really appreciate the developers here and any boardgame company that allows players to play their games here!

A nice mix of planning and great visuals. A fantastic auto-battler. It has a good amount of complexity, but it's easy to pick up right away for those wanting to just jump into it.

It's pretty sick watching a single giant flying behemoth shoot a laser across the entire enemy line, eradicating multiple ships. It's even more fun to come back from a losing position with a well-placed unit that heavily counters a force in its way.

This is better than a lot of city builders. The style is focused. The legal systems are thought-provoking. The growth in the face of a world that doesn't want you there is interesting. I haven't really struggled to keep factions all happy yet, but with time I imagine that will change as well.

Just generally I think it's important to compare this to others in the genre rather than compare it to the sequel that was different. In its current genre it is a heavy-hitter with the possibility of failure as a very real threat when the whiteout comes. I only dipped my toes into Stewards difficulty once and got destroyed, but on the difficulty level below Steward, I am doing quite well. I slept on building additions on my first two attempts. I also slept on insulation for my buildings and both are extremely necessary to survive the whiteout the first time.

Having a powerful exploration force was extremely important for my successful run as well. It's tough to know on the first couple playthroughs what will lead to success. Goods are important, but building additions are SO much better at generating goods than just building more logistics buildings.

Very Chill game to spend some time to wind down.

Wow, I didn't expect it to be so jank-free on the PC. The combat system takes some time to get used to, and with no armor you're basically the worst, most brittle, fighter alive, but once you get past that initial phase of being a loser a medieval loser, there is some great progression.

After a lot of "finding myself" in the world, which took about 12 hours, I have started following closely the main storyline. It's been great so far. I can't tell how long it is, but there's a lot of content I could be doing here. Most of it is a good bit of fun too!

Story/Quest design : 8.5/10 Very good fun and has some actually strong, complex quest design to delve into. At the start, I struggled to pass any skill checks though which slowed down my progress a bit. Once I realized the mechanics of that though I was able to start actually getting good results. It's a slow progress at the start, but it makes sense in a RP sense to not be good at much in this world. It makes sense to not know the area and basically have to move between towns without plan to some extent. It's a little weird how much of what I did could result in a brawl that would decide success or failure. Maybe brawls were the diplomacy of the times, but I think that's the game-y aspect here taking over. I enjoy it though. I like beatin' up dudes that deign to stand in the way of my goals.

Combat design: 9.5/10: It's a very immersive system that I think achieved every goal it set out to do. A fighting system rooted in actual dueling mechanics, without much of the jankiness that might entail. The Master strike thing could make a player overpowered, but I'm a lazy gamer and I tend to just block and parry and that works for me most of the time. I liked the weapon selection, and I'm looking forward to trying out other weapons like polearms and the bow. I have a bow, I haven't really found a use for it yet besides hunting. I guess that makes sense though. It's not as deadly of a weapon against a bunch of armored enemies.

Environment: 8/10: It does a good job of representing towns and what I'd imagine Bohemia looked like at the time. It's a pretty environment. If realism is all you're interested in here it's nailing that idea. I don't have many complaints but on a personal level I generally like more epic environmental design. It wouldn't work in this game obviously since this is realism focused, but I can't help but like what I like.

Systems: 10/10 Surprisingly, all the different systems I've touched have felt pretty fleshed out. I loved the Alchemy system, even though I'm a bit of an impatient player and haven't overly utilized it. I just appreciate that I'm able to make potions for myself, and it's not some simple "gather these resources and boom you can make this potion now." It's doing a lot of work for the roleplaying part of this game. Super cool. The cleaning clothes thing took me a while to figure out, I might have missed a tutorial for it, but after looking it up, I enjoyed the simple mechanic there too. The blacksmithing thing is pretty fun too. Haggling is a pretty simple system but is useful. The food requirement isn't too annoying for me here too. Just normal requirements to eat every once in a while, and don't drink too much.

Overall I give it a 9/10 so far. We'll see how things go for now. I like getting my 30 hours takes on games. It's a pretty normal milestone of a game. Am I enjoying myself at 30 hours? Yes. Are things getting worse or better on a fun-level? They are getting more fun. I hit a milestone in the game's story that I am happy about pretty recently. The game's story has surprised me in how much interesting quests it can come up with this setting. I'm excited to see what else they can pull off here.

10/10

Environment design: 10

Character art design: 10

Dialogue: 10

Storyline: 10

Mechanics of skill checks have never been utilized in such a creative, engaging way. Failure is fun. Success is great too.

It sucks so much that the studio collapsed, but now we got three new ones and hopefully one of them is able to create a good game.