[projectaon] Re: Joe Dever's Lone Wolf in Humble Bundle
- From: Javier Fernandez-Sanguino <jfs@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: Iain Smith <iainsmith@xxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 11 Aug 2014 12:50:54 +0200
Note: Don't get me wrong, I think it is a good game: It is an interesting
way to approach the game book genre, and it certainly provides a different
experience than that of the books.
What I like most is that this gives exposure to younger generations to the
setting, which helps keep Lone Wolf alive and well. Hopefully, Joe Dever is
also getting some additional income from it.
My "rant" is more about the things that I disliked of the game, but there
are a lot of things to like in it!
On 11 August 2014 09:45, Iain Smith <iainsmith@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> I think that the fact that you can't skip back to an earlier decision
> makes you think more about the consequences. For example, releasing the
> prisoner from the Sheriff's office results affects two encounters later:
> one with a negative result, and another with a positive result.
>
Yes, you have to be careful with decisions, but these type of "fundamental"
decisions are quite few. The game feels a little bit linera.
> Typical combat for me was:
>
> (...)
For me it was similar, but I was glad I used the Kai Discipline of
Survival. This one lets you "drain" health from enemy hits. So I would,
typically start with basic hits and then use the discipline to recover
energy (or do it upfront if I had not rested and my HP were low).
I always used the shield (did not fight two-handed, equiping a weapon in
the off hand). Since that gives you the ability to block attacks and it is
very useful to prevent losing Hit Points. Also, the Kai Discipline of
"Combat Skill" allowed you to use attacks without wasting endurance.
Some nuisances were:
- monsters attacking when its *your* turn (¿?)
- very powerful monsters (Gourgaz) which can kill you in their turn with
their three attacks even if fully rested (if it is a surprise attack, or in
some situations they get to hit first) . This makes you restart combat
again and again until you are lucky (they do not do a critical hit or, by
chance, change tactics and don't use their three attacks)
- Kai disciplines having a cool down effect. Not only you have to use Kai
Power but you also can use a Discipline once every two rounds. So you have
to reserve Kai disciplines
- you do not know how many monsters you are going to battle. In some cases
you fight three monsters (the on screren limit), invest all your power to
defeat them, and then, suddenly three more monsters show up (and you didn't
prepare for that, so you die).
The game has quite some replayability (changing Disciplines and see how
that gives new options). However, the amount of combat involved and the
fact that you cannot do it fast (you cannot skip cynematics) makes me think
twice about doing.
To have a time reference: there were some battles that I did not win until
I played them for over 20 minutes, again and again. I had to restart, again
and again (in the default difficult setting). Maybe this is too much time
for some people, which could get frustated with it.
However, when you lose a battle the game does allow you to go back to the
previous checkpoint (to heal if you forgot, before the battle) or to lower
the difficulty if you get too frustated. That is something I did not try
myself, but I acknowledge it is there to try to prevent frustation.
Overall, it's a pretty good game. Not perfect, but far from the bland
> licence cash-in it could have been.
>
Yes, Overall it's a *very good* game, in my opinion. If it wasn't I
wouldn't have "invested" (¿wasted?) so much time in it :)
Best regards
Javier
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