Neue Rezensionen von A Bad Influence

Damn, this one hits hard. Way better than most paid Kinetic novels, though this one may not have the length others do. Still, worth all the time you spend reading it.

Somehow this game made me feel a bigger connection with characters in a shorter amount of time than other visual novels that i paid money for...

Certainly worth a play even if it costed a bit of money.

Oh boy. I have no idea how 84% of people like this game currently. Let me explain exactly what the problems are:

This game is an ARPG (or diablo-like for those who prefer to call it that), and while yes it does have a roguelike element to it, including the Roguelike tag is just shy of lying. This is a looter RPG but you get the added benefit of permadeath losing your gear… so worst of both worlds.

Movement feels horrible. Literally within 1 minute of me playing the tutorial I contemplated refunding just for how bad it was. I swear there’s a lag for switching between directions on keyboard, and doesn’t feel good at all. Coming from Gunfire and Roboquest where the movement felt great and in tune with the gameplay, this game lacks… well, both good controls and gameplay. I swear I would spend 5-10 seconds trying to go through doorways, wondering if I was inebriated doing so.

The RPG mechanics are very simple. The skill tree looks super interesting, but it is in fact just a series of linear lines which have all the good perks later down, so it leads to not wanting to go down more than a few lines at a time. Very little customization past the choice of weapon.

The game pace/combat is reliant on auto-aim. On PC that’s kinda silly, but from how laggy the movement feels it is necessary. This makes the gameplay feel like you’re watching your dude play the game for you rather than playing the game yourself.

Complaint specifically about the ranged weapons: Their limited ammo makes them pretty much useless to use because they don’t have any upside like bonus damage to make up for their constant need to refill ammo.

Translations are horrible. Like, google translate horrible. Pretty common Chinese errors where they don’t use the right tense and put things in the wrong order, etc. Some things (especially pictures) aren’t translated at all.

All in all, I feel like most of the positive reviews are either Bought or Botted. This game has all the ideas of a good game but delivers on none of them. Maybe a 3/10. Clearly work has been put into it, but right now it feels like an Alpha build. Wait about a year and maybe it’ll feel good then.

Expending units to go on operations is a large detractor from the overall feel and enjoyment of the game for me. Strategic unit losses should only occur upon major casualties or battle losses, not a standard cost to capturing regions. Reading other reviews this is apparently a conscious design choice, and that's fine, just not the game for me.

No idea why so few people have played this. Very solid game and good execution. Beat the main game in roughly 5h, so 100% worth it when its on 50% sale just for that, not to mention it has an endless mode, which more than makes up for the other 50%.

Brilliant art style, enjoyable game play, and an interesting story give this game a solid 8.5/10, only losing a few points because it is somewhat short.

I bought this game today, and i played it for 10 hours. Can't wait to play it again tomorrow.

rip my life

This Kovarex situation went nuclear. I hope people put anti-meltdown protocols in place.

Somehow i don't think they did though.

Across the Obelisk is a game that I truly wanted to like, but I can say that it really is not the game it could be nor the game it should be.

Disclaimer: For those that don’t know, Roguelike and Roguelite games are designed around playing runs and then starting over again after that run is completed. Meta Progression is a way that you can become more powerful over time outside of you simply getting better at the game, effectively having previous runs affect your future runs with bonuses or additional currency.

Good:

Made for Multiplayer: This is probably the first Rogue-esque game that felt like it had effort put into it and be multiplayer. The game is made so that you can control 4 characters and divide them up any way you want between 1-4 players. This was the main attraction of why I got it with my friend, and to be honest, it runs like a really well put together card game.

The Art is well done and Stylized: It looks good, and for the budget most Rogue- games get, this is very enjoyable and certainly one of the reasons the game looked appealing.

Interesting Card Combat: The thing that the game does, being a card battler much akin to Slay the Spire, is very fun and enjoyable. The mechanics for the most part are really solid, even if you can kind of fall into ruts on deck design and item choices.


Bad:

Improper Tag Usage: Across the Obelisk is one of the games which prove that we need to properly define the term "Roguelite." The only thing about this game that can be considered Rogue-esque in any way is the run system. The enemies are not randomized, nor are the maps, and the game relies on a large amount of Meta Progression, which admittedly is why it would be called a -lite rather than a -like. I leave out the card drops and the item drops because the I don’t take 90% of the card drops due to them being useless, and the item drops have very little actual deviation, so there isn’t much of standard Rogue progression. Being a veteran of Roguelikes, Across the Obelisk felt too easy after you gather meta progression, and virtually impossible until then simply due to your numbers simply not being big enough. You learn the enemy attack patterns and then play the same game, in order, again and again, with virtually none of the replay-ability that a true Roguelite has. A novel game has it that you play the game and want to try out everything it has to offer, while a good game makes you want to play the same thing again. Across the Obelisk doesn’t do that.
From the store page: “An evolving adventure: each game will be different.” This is not very accurate.

Game Length: For any Rogue- game, run length is very important, especially if you’re “suppose” to grind out a few runs to learn how the game works and get familiar with the mechanics, let alone gather meta progression resources. Playing with 1 friend and explaining our turns with each other ran us 7h for a single complete run. Solo that takes maybe 3-4h. This is very much exceeding the maximum length of any sane “run” and makes the game far too long to play unless you’re sitting at home all day in quarantine. Good Rogue- games tend to stay within the 30min-1h range, but this is ridiculously long.

Deck Building is oddly restrictive, given how everything else isn’t: For a game that revolves around deckbuilding, and for how much meta progression you get, putting the cards you want in your deck is oddly limited for the majority of the game, and to a lesser degree near the end. Most of the card pulls during the game are garbage, and starting the game you don’t generally get a lot of crystals to buy/upgrade cards. Crystals are a meta progression currency you get from previous runs, making lots of people on the discord and even the devs themselves just say “grind them.” This makes your start each run with most of your deck complete, or bare bones and generic, and in either case fails to progress satisfyingly like a true Rogue- game would. As my games would progress, I would change my decks less and less over the duration of a run.

RNG based Events: While this is not a massive negative, the Devs decided not to show players a percentile success chance for RNG events. Since I am good with math I can gather chances relatively accurate and quickly by browsing the decks, but I have seen other players complain about not knowing.

Balancing: This is where the game falls apart completely. In the Early access statement, the devs had this to say: “Balancing a game like this is a really hard task so we've decided that It's the time to share the game with the community, show you what we've been working during the last two years and with your feedback make the final touches to the game.” While this is true, the Devs have shown themselves to misunderstand completely and utterly what makes card games balanced, and what type of balance makes games fun. From adding encounters with no warnings of difficulties (in addition to missing information to be able to judge said difficulty) to completely changing deck mechanics because they’re “too strong” only to make the mechanics just recycled material from other decks. Also, 0 cost +1 draw cards are literally free, so any effect they possess is significantly stronger than what it appears, yet these cards are handed out like candy and have no limit (past the purchase limit) so its stupid not to auto include them, eg Pot of Greed. Hard Counters are somewhat of a problem too.

Balancing Cards: You’ll see “More than 500 upgradeable cards and 200 items to choose” on the store page, but I’d say I probably use 10% of them. Most of them are stupid expensive or serve no purpose that a cheaper card couldn’t do more efficiently. I don’t understand the way that they’ve decided to balance the card costs, and for the most part, the more expensive a card gets the less efficient it is.

Regarding the Discord: Do not touch it with a 10-foot pole. I haven’t seen such an echo chamber since I heard of Parler. One of the events in the game where they put curse cards into your deck to spawn spiders was probably the worst experience I had in a game for a while, where I could tell I was losing on turn 3, but inevitably lost on turn 8. I wrote a large and detailed response and the problems I had with it, and (as other people in the steam reviews have mentioned) these people simply threw out the “just level up your characters” argument. No amount of explaining truly made me think these people understood what I was saying and that they would rather just argue with you. Devs seemed to agree with them for the most part. For reference, these people were talking about lvl 25+ characters, when I beat NG+ (The hardest difficulty mode) with a party of average lvl 12s. You don’t have to grind to win, just be good, and understand that some parts of this game are completely unbalanced and to avoid them.


In Summary: The game will feel interesting to people new to the Rogue- setting but will feel off to those who are used to true Roguelike experiences. The game starts very difficult, and then you hit a point where the game feels just perfect, but then immediately becomes too easy, where none of that difficulty feels like it is you over coming it but rather you grinding enough to have a better deck and better characters. The balance is wack and doesn’t get better but more a continuous loop of sidegrades. Devs are not the most competent but aren’t horrible either. All in all, I’d rate it a 7.5/10, but can’t recommend it due one too many minor problems that just stack up and make the game feel overall… bland.

Its not maplestory, probably.

They're mice, not rats.