I picked this game up when it was released a few days ago and have put many hours into it since, and thankfully have not beaten it yet. As a matter of fact I've barely put a dent in the overall progress of the game. I've done a lot but accomplished very little - which I'm not sure is a good or bad thing. There are however a few aspects of the game I am certain I like and do not like.
Shit I like:
Shit I don't like:
Like I said earlier, Although I've done a lot in this game I've barely put a dent in it. So far I have just collected the hives needed to summon the four different types of minions which took about ten hours or so of off and on play - not including the time spent farming minions for my shitty hat. I have a few other quests right now that I'm doing and a few more to get that really don't have much to do with the main story line either. I should be playing this game for another week or so, which is great for people who have a lot of time on their hands.
Here are some screenshots I stole from the internet, for those who haven't seen the game:
ARFLINGS!
Two minions named "Dis muh gold" and "FUCK, CHEESE IT FUCK!"
Minions carrying food that you promised a village you'd steal back from the halflings, and don't get rewarded for doing.
Commanding a horde of fire minions.
Son of a bitch boss fight that was a gigantic pain in the ass, and again no reward for defeating.
Your tower while under reconstruction.
This game is available for PC and XBOX360.
PC Specs:
Windows XP or Vista
- DirectX 9.0c
- Pentium 4 @ 2.4 GHz or Athlon 2400+
- 512 MB RAM
- Graphics Card: GeForce FX5700 / Radeon 9500 or above
- DirectX 9.0c Compatible Sound Card
- 2x DVD-ROM Drive
- 4.5 GB Hard Drive Space
Recommended Requirements
- Pentium 4 Core 2 Duo or Athlon X2
- 1 GB RAM
- Graphics Card: GeForce 7800 or Radeon X1800
- Sound Card: Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Sound Card Supported Graphics cards
- ATi Radeon 9500, 9600, 9700, 9800, X300, X600, X700, X800, x1300, x1600, x1800, x1900, x1950
- nVidia Geforce FX5700, FX5950, 6600, 6800, 7100, 7300, 7600, 7800, 7900, 7950, 8800
ALSO: Although it says it is Vista compatible, Arri (who has Vista) cannot get the game to run, and is getting the same errors he got while trying to install Jade Empire which the internet said were related to his operating system.
Shit I like:
- The game is beautiful! Everything is so bright and beautiful to look at, then burn down in a fiery inferno.
- The voice acting, and the scripting are kickin' rad, and I often find myself giggling out loud to some the offhand remarks my minions and the peasants make. "I hate Halflings (pronounced ARFLINGS), never trust a creature that is eye hight to your giblets I say!"
- MINIONS! These little goblin like creatures are your little army that do your bidding, and often do crazy and hilarious shit too. For instance, I was in a swamp level and sent them to attack a frog the size of a VW bug and when they jumped on its back the thing started jumping around trying to buck them off like a bull in a rodeo. Words can't really discribe the noises they were making, the looks on their faces as they held onto the back of that frog for dear life.
- I have a tower mistress.
- My forge master is a minion named Giblet.
- The quests are thorough and pretty well thought out, for the most part the quests you receive are pretty long and complicated (not difficult complicated, but complicated like a watch I guess.)
Shit I don't like:
- There are no quest rewards, so to speak. You get quests by talking to NPC's, I use the term "talking" loosely since you don't actually interact with people but rather listen to them talk to you whenever you get near them. Once you complete the quest, you get nothing. There is nobody to go talk to to get a reward, since all usable items are forged by you in your tower the bosses you beat for the quests don't drop any items or money either. Really the only reward you get for doing quests and killing bosses is to simply progress further in the game.
- Once you get your first forge, you are able to make/upgrade your armor. Both options require minion sacrifices in addition to monetary sacrifices (so far this is the only thing I've found that actually uses money in this game so go nuts.) The thing I don't like about this however is that your reward for sacrificing all these minions is retardedly disproportioned. It may be because I only have the first of three forges, but holy crap this sucks.
First I'd like to explain exactly how the minion system works. Whenever you kill a mob in this game it drops a different colored orb, which I guess you could say is it's soul. For each of these souls you can summon a different minion, the more mobs you kill the more minions you can stockpile. Initially you are limited to five minions active at once, and as you progress you can obtain little obelisks that increase that maximum number by five for each one you return to your tower. Mobs respawn every time you enter or leave an area so it's pretty easy to farm them but in most places there aren't more than 15 at a time in any given area so it can get quite tedious.
Now, back to the forge. A good example of why I hate this aspect of the game is my helm upgrade. By the time I did this I had all four colored minions at my disposal, and after reading the description for my helm upgrade I decided it would be worth my while to farm the amount of minions needed to forge it. In a nutshell (help, I'm in a nutshell), by sacrificing SIX HUNDRED AND SEVENTY FIVE minions you are able to increase the maximum number of minions you can have active at one time. Fuck yes, I think to myself, with that big of a sacrifice I'll be able to command like a hundred of these fuckers and destroy everything. I spent the better part of my day farming the minions required for this upgrade and forged my item.
CONGRATULATIONS, YOU CAN NOW COMMAND AN EXTRA FIVE MINIONS! Fuck.
- The game is very linear, you can't really stray from the path and do whatever you want. Much like Jade Empire (A game I really enjoyed) you can only go where the developers want you to go and can't venture into the country side and turn the vast expanse of cropland into a fiery void.
- (Very small gripe) By killing innocent villagers after freeing them, your corruption level goes up and something I don't know happens. Once you let them free it is absolutely impossible to kill them if you happen to run into them in the future. While it is pretty fun to run around and kick these people, then kick them again while they are wiggling around on the ground, I'd really like to just kill them. There is an entire village of unkillable britons outside of my tower and it infuriates me to no end.
- ALL of the bosses/difficult mobs in this game are extremely obese, like the kind of people you see on Maury Povich crying about how much their lives suck. Not only does this offend me because I am one of those people, but every single one of these morbidly obese monsters has some kind of body slam/roll around like that fat kid from hook ability that absolutely destroys all of my minions in one fell swoop.
Like I said earlier, Although I've done a lot in this game I've barely put a dent in it. So far I have just collected the hives needed to summon the four different types of minions which took about ten hours or so of off and on play - not including the time spent farming minions for my shitty hat. I have a few other quests right now that I'm doing and a few more to get that really don't have much to do with the main story line either. I should be playing this game for another week or so, which is great for people who have a lot of time on their hands.
Here are some screenshots I stole from the internet, for those who haven't seen the game:
ARFLINGS!
Two minions named "Dis muh gold" and "FUCK, CHEESE IT FUCK!"
Minions carrying food that you promised a village you'd steal back from the halflings, and don't get rewarded for doing.
Commanding a horde of fire minions.
Son of a bitch boss fight that was a gigantic pain in the ass, and again no reward for defeating.
Your tower while under reconstruction.
This game is available for PC and XBOX360.
PC Specs:
Windows XP or Vista
- DirectX 9.0c
- Pentium 4 @ 2.4 GHz or Athlon 2400+
- 512 MB RAM
- Graphics Card: GeForce FX5700 / Radeon 9500 or above
- DirectX 9.0c Compatible Sound Card
- 2x DVD-ROM Drive
- 4.5 GB Hard Drive Space
Recommended Requirements
- Pentium 4 Core 2 Duo or Athlon X2
- 1 GB RAM
- Graphics Card: GeForce 7800 or Radeon X1800
- Sound Card: Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Sound Card Supported Graphics cards
- ATi Radeon 9500, 9600, 9700, 9800, X300, X600, X700, X800, x1300, x1600, x1800, x1900, x1950
- nVidia Geforce FX5700, FX5950, 6600, 6800, 7100, 7300, 7600, 7800, 7900, 7950, 8800
ALSO: Although it says it is Vista compatible, Arri (who has Vista) cannot get the game to run, and is getting the same errors he got while trying to install Jade Empire which the internet said were related to his operating system.