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Got to prestige 3 boss for Sal and completed prestige 1 story for Rook. The game is great! But I suspect it's similar to Invisible Inc in that it gives you wrong expectations and it's hard to sell to people. Invisible Inc looked like XCOM clone, and with this one people probably expect Slay the Spire. Both were awesome game but didn't get enough renown. I dig everything about this game. I'm a little afraid it won't be able to keep the higher difficulty balance the way good deck builders do. There's so much different stuff in the game I won't be surprised if there are some broken strategies destroying the high level play. But hew, even if tomorrow I realize a perfect strategy for Sal I'll still have a few tense playthroughs making sure it works, and I haven't even touched Brawl, third character or daily runs. So even if it's not as good as StS or Monster Train it's still a great ride with all the visuals and the story. SKULL.GIF posted:It seems pretty clear that all 3 stories have at least like 8 endings each. I've only played Sal and Rook but both seem to have 2 paths. In case of Rook there's a lot of variation on that path, but the only serious choice comes at the end when you got to the expedition, and then in semi-final battle. What am I missing? ilitarist fucked around with this message at 07:39 on Jun 15, 2021 |
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Jun 15, 2021 07:34
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Tried Brawl mode. It's certainly closer to the standard deck-builder formula. It also seem to be using a much wider set of characters and items. But it doesn't feel like a right way to play the game. Even if I have to go through the same dialogues again and again story mode seems right to me. More restricted but more structured. Wonder if other players feel the same.
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Jun 16, 2021 14:21
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It's exactly like StS. I remember playing StS for the first time and beating Act 3 boss. But on the consequent playthroughs, I couldn't come close for a while cause new cards meant unfocused decks. Later I realized you don't have to take the cards the game gives you and could beat Act 3 boss again. Griftlands throws new keywords at you. Unlike StS your initial deck already has cards for specific styles (at least for Sal and Rook) that will be dead weight for most builds, so the problem of removing cards is bigger than in StS. On the other hand, those cards can almost always be upgraded to have some OK effect like draw/discard.
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Jun 17, 2021 12:55
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Yes, prestige 2 is a big jump in negotiation difficulty. I've just had a Sal prestige 3 run where my negotiation deck was unbeatable. But some dude gave me a bane that gave me -2HP every time I got Power gain. I had a lot of cards for gaining power, and worst of all right before the day 4 boss some dude gave me an item that gave me temporary power each time it's drawn. It was a dumb and sad death.
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Jun 18, 2021 20:55
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Won Prestige 3 with Sal. Usually when you think a deckbuilder game relies on luck too much it's a sign of you not getting the game. But I'm starting to think that in the case of Griftlands it's true, at least with Sal. It quickly becomes apparent that with Sal you don't have many ways to build your decks. Negotiations are either about diplomacy or hostility, and this choice is closely connected to your quest choices and specific negotiations. So I think the choice is good, but it's just 2 ways to go. And in case of combat, you have Combo and Bleed. Bleed just doesn't work on some types of enemies. It's a bigger problem in Brawl where the final boss can be immune to bleed, but in normal mode, you meet plenty of robots too, and the final boss can summon them. So really Combo is the way. There are many cards that suit both strategies or spice up them in some way (e.g. you can have some cards giving bonuses on Expend in Negotiations or Improvise in combat). But it still feels you're building the same deck. I've failed Prestige 3 several times, and it's not that harder than Prestige 2, but something just didn't work for me. Another thing is Normal mode relies on you knowing the quests and characters. The game only tells you that this specific NPC will ruin your deck (e.g. you can rely heavily on items and some characters make it so that using items hurts you) if you made them hate you already. I think the game would have benefited from some transparency here. Attitude change is also strange sometimes, e.g. you attack someone and the game tells you they will dislike you, but after you win they start to hate you, like they get another dislike after you spare their lives. I'll probably switch to other characters. Rook looks like a much more interesting character with a lot of variety and tactics. Sal's Combo and Bleed focus enforce specialization, but after 1 game as Rook I feel like he needs more diverse approach in combat, e.g. there's a place for Empty, Spend Charge, and Fully Charged effects in any deck.
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Jun 30, 2021 14:48
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Glazius posted:The game does persist knowledge of boons and banes from run to run. The characters are a static cast and they'll always have the same rewards, and if you take it to the face once, you'll always know (by clicking on their portrait). You can also guess from the shape, though that's not as reliable. I'm on Prestige 4 and I still don't know most people's banes and boons. And guessing the Pokemon from the shadow doesn't help. I really don't see the point of hiding this information, it turns interesting choices into gamble. True, Sal has Discard but it's a side-thing. There aren't many cards that deal damage by discard. You still need some proper attacks and those would probably be combo (or bleed if you want to die from a robot).
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Jul 11, 2021 06:06
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Remember that you can steal at least 2 of Kashio's uber items during the auction. More with some clever mass attack in negotiation. Holographic projector is evil incarnate so you have to always get that just for her to not get it.
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Jul 14, 2021 06:12
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Agree. I admire the desire to make a mini-RPG that is also a hardcore every-click-counts deck builder, but the internal contradiction is clear. The game treats story mode as the main attraction and if you switch to Brawl you crawl a different ladder. Story mode has some interesting mechanics from time to time, I still get new events I haven't seen. In general it feels like you play a more complex game manipulating the outcomes of various quests and encounters. It also means that there are some clearly inferior paths and a lot depends on available encounters. Like in a final day if you go with Two-face you have to beat Admiralty guards before going to auction. I think they're random and sometimes they can be a deadly combo. Plus you not being able to take mercenaries on the last day makes party-focused abilities less attractive. Also you get access to additional vendors in a seemingly random manner: you can only visit many merchants if someone wants to give you a quest in their shop. Merchants are always there, you just can't visit them. Brawl seems to be less arbitrary in that regard, mercenaries are more available and you can often choose your fights. Brawl also lacks some features - I understand you have no access to Mettle shop in Brawl and, say, can't upgrade Rook's guns. I've just said that Brawl is less arbitrary, but it has more possibilities and sometimes it means a wilder balance: I've talked about how Sal's bleed feels inferior to me because robotic/armored enemies just ignore it. At least in the story mode no major boss is robotic and you can make sure Kashio won't summon a robot. In Brawl you can get a robot final boss.
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Jul 14, 2021 08:33
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Oh yeah, the final boss is the same, randomized daily bosses are the problem. And I don't think you can influence Kashio abilities the same way?..
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Jul 15, 2021 06:57
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Some armored people who are definitely not robots count as metallic. Anyway you know what I mean, you plan your Sal story game around knowing which abilities you want allow Kashio to have, you are guaranteed to have 1 merchant who likes you and 1 who dislikes you, you never get a chance yo get a mercenary on the first or last day, youcll never meet certain NPCs and so on and so on. Anyway, it's weird. Both of those modes feel like inconplete versions of a game, each with their own unique limitations and possibilities. Whichever I play I don't feel like I'm playing the "main" mode.Rinkles posted:this game received less fanfare than i was expecting I guess devs failed to explain that this game is not just one more Slay the Spire clone. There are a lot of those nowadays.
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Jul 15, 2021 17:00
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Rinkles posted:I mean it is still fundamentally an StS “clone”, but that doesn’t preclude it from being pretty great. It's StS clone in the same sense as Fallout New Vegas is Call of Duty clone. The story mode is full of choices and consequences making it a unique and impressive take on the RPG genre in general.
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Jul 16, 2021 06:37
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I really do mean that. Random characters are given all kinds of roles and are i volved in a variety of quests. I rarely see a proper RPG that makes the choices as interesting as Griftlands systemic approach makes them. Here persuasion will bring better rewards but the guy hates me because of past events so persuasion would be harder and I'd like to kill him to get rid of the bane. I kill him and now his friend hates me, and his bane makes his faction to be more effective against me in the future, which makes later faction choice much more interesting. Even within the same adventure module this game generates interesting choices all the time, putting to shame all those major RPGs and their trolley problems. There are so many connections and variabilities. A shame so much stuff is obscured.
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Jul 16, 2021 07:22
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Rook has a sticky 0 cost discard that can be upgraded to draw 1 and discard 1, or discard 2. There's also deal 3 damage to a random argument on discard card. There are other ones, but this combination gives a nice and easy damage source, especially when combined with effects that work kn every card play.
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Jul 16, 2021 23:31
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Well, Hearthstone does that. It has a lot of single-player adventures that require you to cone up with decks, and multiplayer Duels mode that has you drafting a starting deck and updating it StS way. But this advice is worthless cause everybody knows Hearthstone and proper drafting requires a lot of cards and thus a lot of grind or money.
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Jul 17, 2021 06:46
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Usually in this kind of games, you complain about RNG when you don't understand the mechanics and cry over bad card draws. But I've just beaten prestige 4 as Sal, and prestige 5 differs only by lowering your health and resolve, and in my last game, they were never low. There are so many moving parts so stars just align sometimes. I had some great social boons (most importantly bonus armor on any card-giving armor) and the enemies weren't hard. Quests can vary greatly: this time for the first time initiation quest for Admirals sent me to some caves where I could persuade a priest to help me beat 3 groups of bandits for lots of XP and find some loot. I didn't use my perks properly (had the one allowing you to hire someone who loves you; planned to use the bartender against Kashio but it's not allowed). Don't think I'll try higher prestige levels, it feels kinda "solved" to me. Only won P2 with Rook so maybe he's more interesting. Hasn't even started Smith. Not saying that the game is supposed to be as replayable as StS and Monster Train, it has a lot of great about it. Also I still can't get over the fact that I'm close to beating the game on the highest difficulty and I still have to guess boons and banes of people. ilitarist fucked around with this message at 07:38 on Jul 21, 2021 |
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Jul 21, 2021 05:43
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I might as well look them up at the wiki, the point is devs clearly consciously tell me I shouldn't base my decisions on this information. I don't understand the reasoning behind this. It kinda counts for the achievements and that's about it.
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Jul 21, 2021 08:58
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Ok, I might have sounded ignorant when I called the game "solved", but the point is that for Sal I see all the winning decks and don't know if there's a point in inventing something else. I've seen all the paths in the story and some seem more optimal to me than others. It comes down to lucky draws but the card variation is not something like StS (or, in the case of Monster Train, a variety of starting decks). I need a working deck by the end of day 2 and I struggle to think of a card that will determine my path by then or give me something to aim for apart from Combo or Bleed. Improvise and Discard are nice, but they feel like a nice addition to a deck, not the core idea. And I won't survive day 2 if I go deep into Improvise/Discard cause I'll probably won't get cards that trigger on discard/improvise by then. Maybe it'd be more fun if there was more of a starting kit like after P1 the game would just drop me at the beginning of Day 1 with some of those card selection mechanics they use in Daily Challenges. Maybe I'm completely missing on something but then it's an issue with a game if I can climb the difficulty ladder that high while missing something important. I'll probably never put enough effort to beat P7 and I don't like the very idea. It'd be fun like a mutator or a mode, but it's the highest difficulty setting and the difficulty comes from outright removal of a mechanic. I feel bad talking about the game in such a way cause it always sounds like those "game is not fun after 500 hours" Steam reviews. The game is great.
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Jul 21, 2021 14:09
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Here we go, Sal Prestige 6 won. I had 2 failed Prestige 5 runs but I won Prestige 6 on my first try. I still think there's too much luck and you lock into victory very early. By the end of day 1 your first couple of drafts define your deck. Later some unlucky combination of banes and enemies can murder you. I lost one of Prestige 5 runs when I didn't pay the attention to Oolo path event on the final day. When you guard a door you're supposed to kill some dude and if you spare him Oolo stops liking you and doesn't give you one of Keshio's boons, so you fight a much stronger version of her. Usually UI tells you if you're supposed to kill a character but not this time. Oh well. Right now I'll probably play Smith's path and will be finished with the game, maybe play some dailies. I'm not interested in Prestige 7 cause it feels like an optional never-level-up challenge. I still have a lot of mettle to earn, so it's like I haven't even unlocked all those bonuses and you tell me to get rid of them. I don't like at all the fact that you have to earn prestige levels separatedly for all characters and all modes. Maybe I'd play Sal Brawl Prestige 6, but after playing Sal Brawl Prestige 1 I feel like I'll have to play few hours of relatively boring easy Brawl games. Maybe when I'm in the mood for such a thing. Same with other characters. You want me to play tutorial for each character - fine, but why should I climb the difficutly for each of them? I don't think any such game does that, certainly not Slay the Spire or Monster Train.
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Jul 30, 2021 15:00
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Oh?.. My bad. Anyway, others like Monster Train are certainly not like that, they have the same difficulty for everyone. Here you have a separate difficulty ladder for Brawl and Story mode. Also in StS completing the main game (or rather beating the heart) for any character is an achievement in itself, I think it took me more time than beating P6, or second-to-last difficulty this game has to offer. So I don't get it.
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Jul 30, 2021 19:10
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Yeah, some people think it's a choice between negotiation and combat. But it's not, you basically have to do both.
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Aug 22, 2021 06:25
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First time I played as Smith I also accidentally murdered the troublemaker midboss. Moreef was just freaking tired. He disliked me from now on but still worked with me cause what can he do.
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Aug 22, 2021 16:13
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Walla posted:After 3 failed runs I lowered the difficulty to Story Mode and that might be where I keep it since I'm much more interested in the stories and world than the deckbuilding. Nothing wrong with that! Smith might indeed be harder to get a hang of. He doesn't have as obvious plays as Rook and especially Sal. Potentially he's much stronger. Thankfully this is not one of those games where you have to master it before you start having fun so don't feel obliged to climb the difficulty ladder.
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Aug 24, 2021 08:13
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