Valherran wrote:I have finally beat this damn game on the hardest settings and have found everything, plus I got all the achievements, and beat the 2 bonus levels.
After playing and beating this on the hardest and 2nd to hardest settings, I can safely say, this game is imbalanced as hell.
Getting through the levels on the 2nd hardest difficulty was kind of a pain in the ass, but the boss fights were all easy. But when you go on the hardest settings, it's the exact opposite. Level treking is easy, but the boss fights are nearly impossible. The only way to beat most bosses on the hardest difficulty is by pure luck and being at level 30.
The reason for all of that, is because of one little setting; Aggressiveness. 30% of the balance problem is right here. When the enemy is standing there doing nothing but throwing fireballs, it makes the game very easy. This is due to them being easy stationary targets, especially when they see you around a corner or over a ledge and just hit that said wall corner or ledge for eternity. Boss fights are an exception to this however, their weapons and abilities are so powerful that they just obliterate you in 2 seconds without having certain spells active. All of this would be much more balanced if the hardest difficulty setting had an aggressive setting of 0.75.
Another 30% Of the balance issue, is the Heaven Guard. This guy is damn near an "I Win" button, he obliterated EVERYTHING, even bosses. All I would have to do is summon it near the enemy and hide around a corner til it was done raping face.
And another 20% of the balance issue, is that weapon Habilities (or whatever you called them) and spells do not awaken enemies. This right here is what allowed me to cheese my way through the hardest difficulty against large groups of enemies.
An additional 10% of the balance issue, is the enemies. Half of them are just not very threatening, but the other half are at WTFBBQ level that can 2-shot you in an instant. One monster that comes to mind, the Hazmat Zombie, fuck that guy. The Annihilator can also go die in a fire.
The final 10% of the balance issue, is the extra mana regeneration you get on hardest difficulty. That made it sooooo much easier to beat the game because it allowed me to spam any spells I wanted to, especially with the Orbits aura enabled. My regeneration was good enough to where I rarely had to fire weapons, I just cheesed the enemy with spells and the Heaven Guard.
There are some things I want to address about this game though besides the massive balance issue:
1. What is the point of putting armor pickups in the levels if you can just replace your armor with mana? Especially in the higher levels, I saw crappy armor pickups that would do absolutely no good for you against the enemies present. On top of that, you rarely ever saw armor while running around, and the good pickups were before bosses. If we can just generate armor through mana, then you might as well remove the armor pickups from the levels. I would say just remove the armor spell to warrant the need for armor pickups, but a good portion of the enemies have a good chance of 2-shotting you at any given time and that spell is what keeps that from happening.
2. Some of the secrets in this game flat out pissed me off. Reason being is that there were a few that do not trigger as found unless you pick up an item that was in it. 1 area in particular is the 1st city level that had a Grenade Launcher as a found secret. If you were full on grenade ammo, that secret will not be marked as found unless you pick it up. Crap like that should be removed from the game, I must have spent like 2 hours trying to figure out where the hell the last secret was, only to discover that.
3. Money drops in this game are kind of aggravating, this is due to killing monsters located in inaccessible areas and money falling into lava/death zones, which screw you out of money. It would be so much better if the monsters just added money to your total when killed.
With those gripes aside, I still think it could use a lot more polish, such things include:
1. More in depth story while playing the game. (Maybe add briefing text between levels like in Doom?)
2. Better dialogue (A lot of it could be better...)
3. Added dialogue (If the main character would talk to himself more and point out puzzle completions, it would help greatly.)
4. Grammar corrections. (Tons of grammatical errors present.)
5. Better naming for characters in the game. (Honestly some of them are incredibly cheesy.
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6. Better character sprites. (Especially for the main hero, and the monster truck, they could be much better.)
7. Better weapon sprites. (This kind of bugged me the most, some of the sprites are incredibly dated.)
8. More micro cut-scenes for puzzle completions (This would greatly help with the frustration of navigation in some levels.)
9. Rework the item spawns in some levels (Armor pickups are useless for example.)
With all of that aside, this game is definitely left open for a sequel, maybe you could expand on this? There is much more potential to be explored here that I would highly encourage you to pursue. This concludes my feedback after many months of playing this game.
PS - Music tracks 30 and 31 don't work when you try to change the music in-game in the current version.
