Évaluations récentes de lightninglord2.71828183

Overview

This game has absolutely no redeeming qualities - the plot is bland, the character creation leaves a lot to be desired and the gameplay contains only the bad parts of old rpgs.

After the TL;DR part, here's me explaining the bad things more in-depth:

-Plot

"Hey, it's me, god. Some dude beat up all of us, can you beat him up for me?" That's literally all there is to the plot. Gaulen also has no personality beyond fulfilling this mission. Since the game wipes out your party for trying to not follow the red line, you have no means to influence that, either.

-Character Creation

Even if there's nine classes in total, I can't help but feel there was no balancing involved. I haven't played all of them yet (not that I want to waste any more time with this than I need to), but I'll give a brief overview of each of chars:

Gaulen the Explorer

Main character. He's basically a fighter, but also has a bunch of overworld boons. Not that interesting, but at least the only forced character is not a liability.

Azura the Paladin

Standing in the middle to heal. The only problem with that is that I need to invest into the healing aura to keep it useful, making its skill cost creep up faster than my maximum PP, so that I can use it less often. At least she has enough armor to keep herself alive (tough luck for her fellows in the front row)

Kallindra the Arcane Warrior

She has what I'd like to call the Black Mage problem. As her only skill is one that does damage, in addition to being not as strong as a true fighter, she must spend PP to accomplish what a fighter can do without spending PP. While she isn't weak when just hitting things, her skill is pretty mediocre and quite frequently fails (reminds me of random tripping in SSBB).

Boreas the Thief

I believe any group without a thief is weaker than one that has him. He can pick locks and detect traps, which allows you to get loot without massive wounding and also not taking humongous damage in dungeons. Furthermore, he even gets a skill to lower buy prices and raise sell revenue (which is crucial given how scarce money is). The bow sucks at Level 1, but as he skilled it, it gains wounding that cripples strong enemies.

Mike the Wizard

He has the Black Mage problem I mentioned with Kallindra. The game keeps the oldschool idea of a damaging mage while most modern games make spellcasters focus on crowd control. While I don't oppose this idea, the scaling of PP makes it really hard for him to do his job right.

Maia the Divine Summoner

The only class with any form of originality in it. She summons creatures that are the avatars of the gods to help you for a few turns. Her energy growth was decent enough that I could have her help out in tight battles, too. I'd love to have a better explanation for what the summons are for, though (I had a tank beast and a healer chick at my disposal).

-Enemies

This is the number one point where most RPGs fall flat - no matter how unique and interesting a game makes the character creation, enemies seem to solely consist out of HP and Attack values and maybe a status problem or a multi-hit ability. Lords of Xulima is no different. Enemies generally have no more than two actions and have little variety in how they're arranged. Success solely depends on you having higher numbers or, if the numbers are roughly even, that you roll better on hitting than the opponents do. An example how I'd do encounters (an example):

Front Row:
Worker Bee, Monster Rose, Worker Bee

Back Row:
Monster Lily-of-the-Valley x2

The worker bees have high evasion, but low HP and are weak to lightning. Their main action is gathering pollen (which recovers the HP of the rose or the LotV), which they can throw at your dudes for little damage and stun. Provoking them makes them sting you, which does quite a bit of damage and poison, but instantly kills the worker bee.

The monster rose mainly shoots spikes to do low-medium damage to the entire front row. Hitting it in melee makes your attacker take damage in retaliation. At lower health, it uses a single target petal shot that does shadow damage and can wound. It's health is quite high and it's weak to fire and resists light/divine.

The LotVs have rather low health and poison melee attackers. They shoot pollen at you that can cause stun, dealing medium-high damage. They swing their blossoms in melee if forced into the front row, dealing less damage and removing the chance to stun. A friendly LotV can force them to go into the back row if there's someone to stand behind. Immune to poison, resists shadow and weak to fire.

This is a battle where you can strategize - do you blast the worker bees with lightning so they can't heal? Or do you save the magic for the melee-punishing rose? Pick apart the LotVs with ranged strikes to keep them from murdering your group? Or do you neuter them by provoking the bees with your tank? Protect your group from poison or rather stun?

If I can think of creative enemies without any drafting, the maker sure as hell can.

-Other things

-Having a tight food clock and constant expenses punish exploration and cripple you for looking into old places, forcing you to use a guide to know where to go at all times.

-No custom portraits? Acceptable, but disappointing.

-It's amusing that the game lets you access quickload in the middle of a battle. Did the maker expect savescumming the encounters?