Necropolis’s roguelike adventuring will kill you not-at-all softly

A new twist on the <em>Souls</em> formula has killer weapons and foes, weak pacing.

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[globalist]

"Want a quick-hit version of Dark Souls' challenge? Buy it. Otherwise, try it."

Try it how exactly?

 

[lewax00]

"Want a quick-hit version of Dark Souls' challenge? Buy it. Otherwise, try it."

Try it how exactly?

Yo ho fiddle-dee-dee, do what you want cuz a pirate is free...

Otherwise, no idea, doesn't look there's a demo...

 

[Zak]

I used to think that randomly and procedurally generated content would be great. Not so. You can't replace maps and levels made by skilled designers.

 

[rabish12]

globalist[/url]":b4tgsfvv]"Want a quick-hit version of Dark Souls' challenge? Buy it. Otherwise, try it."

Try it how exactly?

Buy on Steam, play less than two hours, get a refund if it's bad.

 

[abridge]

Love the art. Great look.

 

[lewax00]

I used to think that randomly and procedurally generated content would be great. Not so. You can't replace maps and levels made by skilled designers.

Depends on the game. Some games work well this way (e.g. The Binding of Isaac...nearly up to 500 hours on that...second only to my first MMO experience in terms of play time). Others don't. I think, for example, in anything competitive, random levels is going to be bad, because it may give one player/team an unfair advantage.

 

[Zak]

rabish12[/url]":3kwssa24]

globalist[/url]":3kwssa24]"Want a quick-hit version of Dark Souls' challenge? Buy it. Otherwise, try it."

Try it how exactly?

Buy on Steam, play less than two hours, get a refund if it's bad.

There is also a limitation to be aware of how soon after the purchase you play the game. A month or two? I played a game for less than an hour but several months after a purchase and Steam refused to refund it. I bought a bunch of games on a sale and then gradually tried them out over several months, unaware of that limitation. Now I don't buy a game unless I know I will be able to play it within a month.

 

[Zak]

lewax00[/url]":btff0rps]

I used to think that randomly and procedurally generated content would be great. Not so. You can't replace maps and levels made by skilled designers.

Depends on the game. Some games work well this way (e.g. The Binding of Isaac...nearly up to 500 hours on that...second only to my first MMO experience in terms of play time). Others don't. I think, for example, in anything competitive, random levels is going to be bad, because it may give one player/team an unfair advantage.

Planetary Annihilation has procedurally generated planets and they're boring. I'm cautiously optimistic about No Man's Sky.

 

[NemesisX00]

(Also, Harebrained needs to turn on public matchmaking for co-op post-haste.)

You must be some kind of crazy masochist to want public drop-in/drop-out co-op in a game that has perma-death AND friendly fire on. I imagine the trolls would quickly become worse than they are in the Dark Souls series.

 

[samred]

NemesisX00[/url]":3q8q9c20]

(Also, Harebrained needs to turn on public matchmaking for co-op post-haste.)

You must be some kind of crazy masochist to want public drop-in/drop-out co-op in a game that has perma-death AND friendly fire on. I imagine the trolls would quickly become worse than they are in the Dark Souls series.

Absolutely true. But the OPTION should absolutely be in place.

 

[lewax00]

lewax00[/url]"1xsydyo]

I used to think that randomly and procedurally generated content would be great. Not so. You can't replace maps and levels made by skilled designers.

Depends on the game. Some games work well this way (e.g. The Binding of Isaac...nearly up to 500 hours on that...second only to my first MMO experience in terms of play time). Others don't. I think, for example, in anything competitive, random levels is going to be bad, because it may give one player/team an unfair advantage.

Planetary Annihilation has procedurally generated planets and they're boring. I'm cautiously optimistic about No Man's Sky.

Sure, there's just bad generation too. I think, more in that realm, Minecraft does a pretty good job at world generation (there always seem to be interesting features to find, both above and below ground). So good is at least possible.

 

[rabish12]

Zak[/url]":ndt05o8d]

rabish12[/url]":ndt05o8d]

globalist[/url]":ndt05o8d]"Want a quick-hit version of Dark Souls' challenge? Buy it. Otherwise, try it."

Try it how exactly?

Buy on Steam, play less than two hours, get a refund if it's bad.

There is also a limitation to be aware of how soon after the purchase you play the game. A month or two? I played a game for less than an hour but several months after a purchase and Steam refused to refund it. I bought a bunch of games on a sale and then gradually tried them out over several months, unaware of that limitation. Now I don't buy a game unless I know I will be able to play it within a month.

The actual limit is within two hours of total playtime or two weeks past purchase (or release if you pre-purchase), whichever comes sooner. They still sometimes issue refunds for customers who go beyond those limits but it's not something I'd risk - if you intend to buy a game in order to try it then it's important that you actually try it when you buy it and not long afterwards.

 

[rabish12]

lewax00[/url]":1kjqopz7]

I used to think that randomly and procedurally generated content would be great. Not so. You can't replace maps and levels made by skilled designers.

Depends on the game. Some games work well this way (e.g. The Binding of Isaac...nearly up to 500 hours on that...second only to my first MMO experience in terms of play time). Others don't. I think, for example, in anything competitive, random levels is going to be bad, because it may give one player/team an unfair advantage.

There's a few ways to get around it even then. For example, asynchronous competitive play is easy enough - generate from a seed every, say, 24 hours or so, and give everyone the opportunity to compete on that specific generated content. Even for synchronous content it has more or less the same downsides as created content in that anything asymmetrical is going to inherently favor one side or the other to at least some small degree, though there's (fairly complicated) ways to deal with that as well.

 

[sep332]

I've seen this compared to Dark Souls a lot, but I don't see how a game can be randomly generated and still be at all similar to Dark Souls. The article only mentioned the controls being similar. Is that really all it takes for everyone to say "oh, this is like that other game"?

 

[Relto]

sep332[/url]":2y6dwofs]I've seen this compared to Dark Souls a lot, but I don't see how a game can be randomly generated and still be at all similar to Dark Souls. The article only mentioned the controls being similar. Is that really all it takes for everyone to say "oh, this is like that other game"?

Every hard game = Dark Souls these days.

 

[lewax00]

lewax00[/url]":3hwn5exv]

I used to think that randomly and procedurally generated content would be great. Not so. You can't replace maps and levels made by skilled designers.

Depends on the game. Some games work well this way (e.g. The Binding of Isaac...nearly up to 500 hours on that...second only to my first MMO experience in terms of play time). Others don't. I think, for example, in anything competitive, random levels is going to be bad, because it may give one player/team an unfair advantage.

There's a few ways to get around it even then. For example, asynchronous competitive play is easy enough - generate from a seed every, say, 24 hours or so, and give everyone the opportunity to compete on that specific generated content. Even for synchronous content it has more or less the same downsides as created content in that anything asymmetrical is going to inherently favor one side or the other to at least some small degree, though there's (fairly complicated) ways to deal with that as well.

True. I should have thought of the asynchronous situation, I do that on a daily basis (BOI:R daily challenges work exactly that way).

 

[DownwardTrajectory]

sep332[/url]":b82x2elt]I've seen this compared to Dark Souls a lot, but I don't see how a game can be randomly generated and still be at all similar to Dark Souls. The article only mentioned the controls being similar. Is that really all it takes for everyone to say "oh, this is like that other game"?

The game practically shouts "I am like dark souls"...c'mon estus flasks, big lumbering knights, dank environments, references to dying a lot... it's definitely wearing its influences.

 

[rpresser]

Why, oh why did the term "roguelike" come to mean *only* random map / item / monster, and not the far more important turn-based / topdown view / keyboard only attributes???

Dark Souls is not roguelike. Necropolis is not roguelike. Binding of Isaac is not roguelike.

ROGUE is roguelike. Nethack is roguelike. Angband is roguelike.

Find your own term, stop abusing mine.

 

[lewax00]

Why, oh why did the term "roguelike" come to mean *only* random map / item / monster, and not the far more important turn-based / topdown view / keyboard only attributes???

Dark Souls is not roguelike. Necropolis is not roguelike. Binding of Isaac is not roguelike.

ROGUE is roguelike. Nethack is roguelike. Angband is roguelike.

Find your own term, stop abusing mine.

Unfortunately for you, the gaming community has decided otherwise. (Also, one thing you left off your list of the popular usage, it usually involves permadeath.) And it's communities that get to decide definitions, not individuals (since words are used to convey a common meaning between individuals).

But you're right, Dark Souls is not roguelike by the popular definition either.

 

[Sajuuk]

sep332[/url]":1kut0786]I've seen this compared to Dark Souls a lot, but I don't see how a game can be randomly generated and still be at all similar to Dark Souls. The article only mentioned the controls being similar. Is that really all it takes for everyone to say "oh, this is like that other game"?

There's slightly more to a videogame than level design alone. I can certainly see the similarity to dark souls based on how the combat system appears to work and other core mechanics.

 

[Voldenuit]

Yea... I did not enjoy my experience with it.

I preordered the game because it was advertised with a free OST, but the OST was nowhere to be found (other users on Steam reporting the same issues).

That in itself is forgivable, but the game was borderline unplayable for me because it kept remapping the functions on my Shield controller (Xinput) during the game. One moment LB would raise the shield, the next it would swing my sword instead. Sometimes A would jump, and other times it would bring up the menu, sending me to my death. LB and RB are supposed to trigger special shield and weapon attacks, but would sometimes rotate the camera instead, leaving dead again. Other users are reporting similar issues with x360, Steam and X1 controllers, so it's not just a case of my having a weird controller. Harebrained did suggest that users unplug razer peripherals, but since I don't own any, that didn't help me.

From my brief stint in the game (when I wasn't dying), the "look" of the game is gorgeous, but the combat was terribly frustrating. I'm no stranger to souls-like games and difficulty levels, having finished Hyper Light Drifter, Jotun, and played Teleglitch a bit, but the combat in the game was frustratingly sluggish. Attack animations take way too long to trigger, and there is not much variety in combos or special attacks.

It's a shame, I really wanted to like the game, but was left profoundly disappointed.

 

[keithzg]

Sounds like it could be a lot better with some post-launch patches. Good news for me I suppose, since I'm waiting on the semi-promised Linux release anyways. The list of unplayed (and even moreso, unfinished) games on my Steam list is . . . non-trivial, after all, as I'm sure it is for many of us.

 

[Jilkon]

"Souls-like" does not at all go with "Perma-death" and "Randomly generated" in my opinion. The entire point of the Souls experience is mastery over a set of obstacles that are unknown to start with but stay the same afterwards. Trial and error is the name of the game. "Trial and error and restarting the whole bloody thing" is a different thing entirely.

 

[pqr]

lewax00[/url]":bcyp7wu0]

lewax00[/url]":bcyp7wu0]

I used to think that randomly and procedurally generated content would be great. Not so. You can't replace maps and levels made by skilled designers.

Depends on the game. Some games work well this way (e.g. The Binding of Isaac...nearly up to 500 hours on that...second only to my first MMO experience in terms of play time). Others don't. I think, for example, in anything competitive, random levels is going to be bad, because it may give one player/team an unfair advantage.

Planetary Annihilation has procedurally generated planets and they're boring. I'm cautiously optimistic about No Man's Sky.

Sure, there's just bad generation too. I think, more in that realm, Minecraft does a pretty good job at world generation (there always seem to be interesting features to find, both above and below ground). So good is at least possible.

Yeah going pure random's tricky because reality's 99% of time super boring. Is there writeup somewhere on how minecraft does it? To me it suggests some understanding of what constitutes 'interesting' or at very least of 'boring' (so you can bias against that then).

Regarding this game it'd be useful to have means to generate same world for different people (independent playthroughs but in way shared experience) and also to optionally restart in same world to retry beating certain interesting combos instead of having to run lottery after lottery until something similar comes up again (NMS could use such options too btw). But secretly I'm really hoping this game from one of masters of storytelling's just jumpboard towards random generation of compelling STORIES in next 5-10-20 years finally (holy grail in my mind in computer RPGs).

 

[DJ-R]

rabish12[/url]":v30skjrj]

globalist[/url]":v30skjrj]"Want a quick-hit version of Dark Souls' challenge? Buy it. Otherwise, try it."

Try it how exactly?

Buy on Steam, play less than two hours, get a refund if it's bad.

Yeah is what I did... disappointed.

 

[mhac]

-mhac³

 

[Katana314]

Jilkon[/url]":16ruc6xo]"Souls-like" does not at all go with "Perma-death" and "Randomly generated" in my opinion. The entire point of the Souls experience is mastery over a set of obstacles that are unknown to start with but stay the same afterwards. Trial and error is the name of the game. "Trial and error and restarting the whole bloody thing" is a different thing entirely.

While I agree that permadeath is too far, I did always find it surprising that Dark Souls both punishes you for dying (PAST sending you to a checkpoint) and heavily encourages you to repeat everything you did up until you died, when that may have been the wrong way to go to begin with.

Super Meat Boy encourages trial and error. Ori and the Blind Forest encourages trial and error. Dark Souls discourages dying.

 

[rabish12]

DJ-R[/url]":sezt0sca]

rabish12[/url]":sezt0sca]

globalist[/url]":sezt0sca]"Want a quick-hit version of Dark Souls' challenge? Buy it. Otherwise, try it."

Try it how exactly?

Buy on Steam, play less than two hours, get a refund if it's bad.

Yeah is what I did... disappointed.

Same. I had been excited for the game given the developer's pedigree with Shadowrun, but it feels like a "B-team" project. The style of the characters is nice enough but the constant monochrome of the environments gets a bit tiring, the combat is overly simplistic and easy and has a serious lack of weight, the AI is absolutely and completely braindead and constantly gets stuck on objects and corners, and the overall game just has a massive lack of variety (identical rooms should not be down the hall from each other). I pretty much gave up on it when I realized that I was only getting hit (let alone dying) whenever I got bored of the repetitive hit-dodge-repeat combat and just starting mashing the button to try and get it over with faster.

I love the idea of a Dark Souls clone with more of the "traditional" roguelike elements - permanent death, randomly generated areas, unidentified items and so on - but the game itself is so rote and bland that I just couldn't enjoy it.

 

[Mazzicc]

lewax00[/url]":11c4dmpz]

Why, oh why did the term "roguelike" come to mean *only* random map / item / monster, and not the far more important turn-based / topdown view / keyboard only attributes???

Dark Souls is not roguelike. Necropolis is not roguelike. Binding of Isaac is not roguelike.

ROGUE is roguelike. Nethack is roguelike. Angband is roguelike.

Find your own term, stop abusing mine.

Unfortunately for you, the gaming community has decided otherwise. (Also, one thing you left off your list of the popular usage, it usually involves permadeath.) And it's communities that get to decide definitions, not individuals (since words are used to convey a common meaning between individuals).

But you're right, Dark Souls is not roguelike by the popular definition either.

Perma-death is really what most people mean by roguelike. I've also heard turn-based as a requirement. I've never heard of top-down or keyboard only as critical attributes.

The only thing I think of when I hear roguelike is perma-death. And usually that's the only relevant thing people are looking for.

 

[rabish12]

Mazzicc[/url]":160q9z5l]

lewax00[/url]":160q9z5l]

Why, oh why did the term "roguelike" come to mean *only* random map / item / monster, and not the far more important turn-based / topdown view / keyboard only attributes???

Dark Souls is not roguelike. Necropolis is not roguelike. Binding of Isaac is not roguelike.

ROGUE is roguelike. Nethack is roguelike. Angband is roguelike.

Find your own term, stop abusing mine.

Unfortunately for you, the gaming community has decided otherwise. (Also, one thing you left off your list of the popular usage, it usually involves permadeath.) And it's communities that get to decide definitions, not individuals (since words are used to convey a common meaning between individuals).

But you're right, Dark Souls is not roguelike by the popular definition either.

Perma-death is really what most people mean by roguelike. I've also heard turn-based as a requirement. I've never heard of top-down or keyboard only as critical attributes.

The only thing I think of when I hear roguelike is perma-death. And usually that's the only relevant thing people are looking for.

There's a bit more than just permadeath or turn-based - random elements are a pretty substantial part of the genre's original canon too. Top-down and keyboard-only aren't so important though - even most classic roguelikes offer a mouse-driven scheme as an alternative by now, and a lot of them have functionality or front-ends that let you alter the perspective. Presentation and input scheme just don't make sense as part of the defining characteristics of a genre.

Honestly, I kind of like the Berlin Interpretation for the genre even though I don't agree with some of their valued points (like using an ASCII display mattering in the slightest). I just agree with the broader concept of looking for common features in a genre's "canon" and assessing how well a game fits into the genre based on that.

All that said, as far as common usage of the term goes I almost never see it used for games that don't have substantial random elements, and for games that skew fairly far from the originals I see the term "rogue-lite" used a lot more. Necropolis even uses rogue-lite to describe itself on the Steam store page.

 

[JamesHulsmann]

The steam reviews are not very good.

Game needs some patches, even a big one or two, and perhaps a drop to $20.

BTW - referring to DS when talking about the combat of this game is insulting to DS, IMO (it doesn't have anywhere near the weight or precision to make such a claim). I also do not find the lack of information about anything you are picking up to be a benefit. "Level 1 Sword" and some flavor text that tells you mostly nothing about the item, and there is no way to get more information (no scroll of knowledge or whatever).

So, you pick up a Level 2 Sword and a Level 2 Axe and there is zero information about what may or may not be different between the two beyond some assumption the combat itself doesn't make clear enough. CinicalBrit referred to this as "wiki difficulty" or something like that, and I happen to not enjoy this. I understand Rogue-likes not telling you everything (played plenty of them of had loads of fun), but they at least give you the ability to know something meaningful about a weapon or armor piece.


The enemies also tend to drop the same stuff every time you kill them - at least with their weapons. So you end up getting far too much same-samey in the earlier parts where you see basically the same mobs dropping basically the same loot that you will not be told any real information about. Add sub par Sould-wanna-be combat to the mix, and I see no reason to play/keep this game in my Steam library.

 

[SgtCupCake]

Mazzicc[/url]":y29gp3sf]

lewax00[/url]":y29gp3sf]

Why, oh why did the term "roguelike" come to mean *only* random map / item / monster, and not the far more important turn-based / topdown view / keyboard only attributes???

Dark Souls is not roguelike. Necropolis is not roguelike. Binding of Isaac is not roguelike.

ROGUE is roguelike. Nethack is roguelike. Angband is roguelike.

Find your own term, stop abusing mine.

Unfortunately for you, the gaming community has decided otherwise. (Also, one thing you left off your list of the popular usage, it usually involves permadeath.) And it's communities that get to decide definitions, not individuals (since words are used to convey a common meaning between individuals).

But you're right, Dark Souls is not roguelike by the popular definition either.

Perma-death is really what most people mean by roguelike. I've also heard turn-based as a requirement. I've never heard of top-down or keyboard only as critical attributes.

The only thing I think of when I hear roguelike is perma-death. And usually that's the only relevant thing people are looking for.

I guess, different flavors. When I hear roguelike, I think random map generation. The other systems many people attribute to rougelike tend to be a consequence of the game mechanic of doing a "run" through the randomly generated level(s).

 

[andygates]

It's the variation that excites me. Even on just my second run through D3 I'm bored of the Skeleton King. One for payday, especially with old Rogue delve-buddies possible.

 

[rabish12]

Just a short PSA: the GOG version of this game does not currently have online coop (despite having advertised it as a major feature when taking pre-orders for the game on the site), so if you're planning on buying it you're much better off just going to Steam.

 

[Katana314]

rabish12[/url]":2s8qmjzi]Just a short PSA: the GOG version of this game does not currently have online coop (despite having advertised it as a major feature when taking pre-orders for the game on the site), so if you're planning on buying it you're much better off just going to Steam.

Ouch. As much as that sucks, there's probably plausible reasoning for it - I doubt GOG has such a robust multiplayer friend system or anything.

Would be interesting if someday an Origin player could add a Steam user as a friend and play together.

 

[rabish12]

Katana314[/url]":2ascqzmx]

rabish12[/url]":2ascqzmx]Just a short PSA: the GOG version of this game does not currently have online coop (despite having advertised it as a major feature when taking pre-orders for the game on the site), so if you're planning on buying it you're much better off just going to Steam.

Ouch. As much as that sucks, there's probably plausible reasoning for it - I doubt GOG has such a robust multiplayer friend system or anything.

They actually do have a system for it built into Galaxy, and the page for the game does say that multiplayer is going to come to it later. I'm guessing that the developers just prioritized one store over the other and decided to release earlier rather than waiting for both versions to be at par, which is a shame.

Would be interesting if someday an Origin player could add a Steam user as a friend and play together.

That's actually possible right now and a couple of games already do it (albeit between GOG and Steam rather than Origin and Steam), it just depends on the developer to implement it and it makes the whole thing more complicated.

 

[kimbo305]

"arrow launches will lock your character into a full, sometimes slow motion"

Missing word?