"It'd be cool if the game held back some mechanics." It does. You are playing on the easiest dificulty (Good choice, it's there to make learning easier), and on higher dificulties (Fourth dificulty? unlocks rainpunk engines and blight) there are additional mechanics. When you enter a new teritory the game tells you what kind of resources you are likely to find and how much soil there is to be had, so you can use that to decide the buildings to pick. Diferent biomes with diferent trees have pretty major diferences in resources available, and the trees have diferent bonus resources. You always get wood, but you can get amber, copper, fiber, extra wood, roots, insects, eggs and more depending on the tree. It might feel like the game is demanding everything to be perfect, but it really does not. There are 5 dificulty levels and then 20 prestige dificulty levels, and that is where actual perfection is required, but you can play a much more casual game. Figuring things out and optimizing is the meat of the game, and it offers plenty of it. The multiple mechanics provide many angles from which to push the player to need that optimisation. Lorewise, the world is fucked. The rain is magical and the world actively hates you. The Main City and The Emperess are the only things keeping the civilization a thing, and you do not really know what is up. You are the guy they send out into the world to gather stuff between the storms to keep the city going for another cycle, no permanent habitation out there in the rain is really possible. Later on you unlock Foxes, who kinda tried living out in the rain, and now they all have mutations that are kinda cancerous looking.
I believe rain engine stuff is unlocked via levelling up / grinding, but you are right about the blight thing. I never actually played on the higher difficulties so I can't really comment on them, but I will say I think they could somehow disincentivise the lower 2 difficulties to help progress away from them. Perhaps if I played more and didn't need seals anymore, I would worry less about speedrunning and so harder towns could seem less like a wrong choice.
@@OffyDGG The disincentive of rushing towards the seals is that you need higher dificulty games for further seals, but also,the seals don't really do much. Your metaprogression is tied primarily to your level and building up the City, both of which are massively faster with higher dificulties, as you noted, playing on normal gives tripple the resources and also more xp. Achievments also unlock stuff, and are also a major xp source, and many of them you simply can't do on lower dificulties because you win too quickly. The seals? Mostly for people seeking extra challenge and greater distance from the city.
I think it was because going for the seals felt like forward progress, in that it effectively unlocks more of the map, and I assumed that getting them was my main goal. I think that idea was somewhat mistaken, and I was having less fun by tailoring everything I did around it. That is what it sounds like, anyway. Perhaps grinding the level up tree / achievements is more of the intended progression incentive, which I didn't really pay much attention, other than my brief 'I will grind' phase in this video.
@@OffyDGG it is unlocked after "grinding" in as much that it's about 3 unlocks in and you could get it in about 6 hours. I found that the progression pairs well with increasing your difficulty once you feel ready for it. Veteran starting to feel easy because you have meta unlocks? Play on Viceroy. Viceroy starting to be a little too easy? Prestige 1. All the way up to prestige 20, and P20 is considerable more difficult with every meta unlock than say viceroy with no meta unlocks. And you're incentivized to play on higher difficulties because you get more meta upgrade and seal fragments.
@@justinfritz4817 Sounds good, although as I said to someone else, I didn't even discover prestige difficulties, and I didn't get the rainpunk stuff after way 3 unlocks up the trees so not sure what you mean there. Been too long so i can't remember exactly how to get it, only that I remember looking at it and thinking 'it's too far away for me to worry about it for now', then the game was over for me before I noticed it again. It sounds to me like if the easy difficulty had been more about lowering food consumption and less about increasing completion speed, I wouldn't have been feeling like I was supposed to use it to get further out, and thus would have more resources to level up and get more into a difficulty progression curve. I think I was overly focused on getting the seal unlocks, since that felt like the goal of the game to me, when it probably wasn't really.
First off, as always, a pleasure to listen to you and you always manage to provide insights that I often haven't thought about myself. As we've talked about previously, roguelikes, especially the traditional ones (i.e. DCSS, Brogue), tend to play their full hands quite early on, or you could say that they "front-load" a huge portion of their content in a way. No unlocking, no need to "grind," a lot of it is right there from the beginning. This makes the randomness pretty important in order for the player to feel like they aren't just doing the same thing over and over again. And, consequently, these games also tend to have a huge amount of content to rectify this. So every new run it feels like you're seeing and learning something new. However, a new brand of roguelikes in more modern times that the community affectionately calls "rogueliTes," attempts to rectify some of the former's potential issues but also introduces new ones in turn, depending on who you ask. Against the Storm falls under this category. For example, you often mention needing to feel that sense of progression in order for your playtime to feel more meaningful, and that's where meta-progression comes in. It holds onto a lot of its content in an effort to make it not so "front-loaded" but makes you have to unlock it instead through various means. As some have probably already mentioned, you haven't *quite* seen the full game yet, and a lot of the stuff the developers do/add tend to be balanced around some of the higher echolons of difficulty. Of course, this is where traditional roguelike players tend to get cranky, as they feel that you shouldn't have to "grind" through the game in order to experience it in its entirety from the get-go. There's the also an old roguelike discussion that stems from way-back-when (and honestly applies to nearly all games if you think about it) that basically talked about player choice and how difficulty (and RNG) affects that sort of stuff. If the game is quite easy, then your range of choices of how to beat the game expands significantly. That's the bright side of it, as it promises massive player choice. But on the negative side of things, if you can do whatever you want and still win, then the choice you made doesn't really matter. As you put it, maybe things start to feel a bit "watered-down." In contrast, a harder game means you're much more limited in how you beat it. On the bright side, this means that your choices do matter, because you have the "correct choice" vs. the "sub-optimal" or even "incorrect" choice. Your choice may have been the difference of winning vs. losing. This obviously ties into the negative side, having your options limited like so is often seen as a bad thing. And obviously, if there is no RNG, then you just simply, deterministically pick the superior choice, whereas with RNG thrown into the mix things may get a bit more interesting, as you have to decide what the best choice can be depending on the circumstances. RogueliTes, such as AoS, tend to lean more into the former. A lot of modern rogelite developers are terrified of players calling their game unfair for obvious reasons. In AoS, though, especially from prestige 10-15 onwards, things can start feeling pretty intense. As soon as Prestige 1, for example, you need 20 reputation required to win, which means your settlement has more time to hum along a bit more before the game ends, and the choices that you feel weren't really mattering before might suddenly feel a bit more significant. I think the developer's intention here is to have new players start on the easier difficulties so they can learn what the buildings do, what the production chains are etc. because as you said, you sort of just have to pick randomly to start when you know nothing. And to continue a discussion we've had before, there's the topic of game length. Your average game is usually upwards of 10 hours, but once you've beaten it you've pretty much seen everything. Traditional roguelikes are more along the lines of 5-10 hour experiences, and perhaps even longer if we consider outliers like Cataclysm: Dark Days ahead, but with the added caveat of probably seeing new things, or getting into new tactical situations when starting a new run. This is where I previously compared something like a traditional roguelike to a 4X game, because you can probably say the same thing there. And then there's the more modern roguelites, where runs tend to average about an hour, give or take a bit. But again with the added caveat of seeing new things each run potentially. However now we add metaprogression (which is probably why roguelites are shorter to begin with), which keeps on adding slight variances until you finally unlocked everything, however long that takes. Whichever is the most appealing is obviously up to the player, in the end, but it's clear that roguelites have become more mainstream than their ancestors. I guess my point here would be, it'd be interesting to watch you give a more traditional roguelike a try, but since you like Hades (at least I remember you saying this, maybe I'm wrong..) I imagine that you probably DO like roguelites, but perhaps you need a bit more meaning in your gameplay, like more story, which obviously AoS lacks. There was also the fact that Hades, IMHO, is much harder at its baseline than AoS is on the lower difficulty levels. As for the game having super positive reviews, well I think you were onto something there. Here's my opinion, though: If you don't like AoS' brand of city builder, well, many types of pure city builders exist. You mentioned this, but not in relation to the positive reviews. If someone doesn't like it, or that they won't stick with it, they may just leave a positive review because they can see the game is well put together or that the developers are passionate etc. etc. At some point it becomes hard to leave a negative review for a lot of people if the reasons they don't like it start to feel a bit more personal, as I'm sure you could relate to. There's also the positive feedback loop aspect back at it again, if they see the game positively reviewed, more people are probably more likely to do so. Nevertheless, should you choose to read this, I hope I provided an interesting read! As mentioned, I certainly enjoyed the video, and I'm glad that you at least got a little bit of enjoyment out of the game. But now, onto the next!
Thanks for a great comment! The feeling I get is that the endgame experience is actually what I'm looking for from this game, and so it is shame that I essentially got tired of it before I got there. What I can't judge, then, is whether my feeling that I resented having the towns deleted over and over would still be there if the towns took longer and generally had more reward for the kind of strategy-heavy or min-maxing approach I was taking - I suspect it would have got a more positive reaction from me. You are right about Hades; I think it's very good, more challenging and generally has more 'content' than AoS so you unlock stuff pretty much every time you play. AoS has the more daunting really long level up tree where it perhaps makes the mistake of revealing how big it is right away, and you see that the perks at the top and the bottom are the same. This damaged my hope for significant changes to come later on, and made me less interested in actually progressing down that tree. (That said, with Hades I *still* kept thinking 'if only this wasn't a rogueli*e'. I was desperate for more maps or things to do with all the powers you unlock). As people have said, there actually *are* changes to AoS gameplay that come later on (not sure how substantial though), but I suppose the game never 'took me there' because the level grind was too long and the pressure to keep the difficulty low was both slowing the game down and making me annoyed that it was too easy! It's a situation where I get this 'something has got to give' feel, where removing one string from the rope would fix everything all of a sudden. For example, the game is probably based around an 'endgame' where the player already knows the whole production tree. So I think there is little issue in showing that tree to new players as well. This is personal taste, but I am 10x more interested in working out a difficult plan after knowing what I have, vs learning the production tree through experience / trial and error, but getting easy stages in exchange. I'm sure this is probably just some 'curse of early access' going on, where the early game becomes a forgotten memory! Perhaps this contributes to the high drop off rate for players too. Even I, who played for some 15 hours and got some of the rarer achievements, have apparently dropped off too soon to the reach the 'it gets really good when you reach this point' moment! Not that any of this really matters, the game is successful and acceptable without worrying about these things. It is only that it feels there is a spark of perfection that could be brought out somehow, and I definitely came away feeling like I was missing something despite enjoying the game more than most I've played recently. Yes, the impossible-to-please critic is here: even if I like your game, I will damn it for being anything less than the platonic ideal of personal-to-me entertainment!
@@OffyDGG Honestly, I share some of your sentiments. For what its worth, I've always found the pacing on when you're supposed to tackle certain difficulty levels in this game a bit off, and the developers are aware of it too. As a matter of fact, that was sort of the purpose of the sealed forest update, to encourage people to work their way up the difficulty levels, as well as provide a more natural progression. Not sure how successful it was, from what I can tell in the video it didn't seem to be paced very well in the lower difficulty levels. In the prestige levels, for example, each seal the minimum difficulty goes up by 5 prestige levels, a pretty big jump, whereas going from settler to pioneer, or even pioneer to veteran is a rather negligible jump in difficulty. Personally, it didn't take long before I started going into the prestige difficulties, needing 18 reputation to win feels a lot more natural in this game (and less likely to feel like things ended prematurely). As a matter of fact, a lot of things didn't make much sense to me in the lower difficulty levels, like how OP trading is and the low building cost for every building (making perks like Cheap Construction seem useless). But then once I hit the prestige level that nerfed trading or made everything cost more building resources, the game started to make a lot more sense to me. In case my bias wasn't obvious, I think I prefer games where I can play the balanced, intended experience right from the get-go, like in the aforementioned traditional roguelikes. That being said, I still like AoS and appreciate it for what it is (especially once I started prestige), there's really not anything like it. I enjoy playing it once every week or so. As an aside, you really don't have to worry much about the seals or the blight cycle, you can start climbing up the prestige difficulties pretty much immediately if you really want to, that's basically what I did, I played way before the sealed forest was a thing. So in that case, your assumption that its balanced around an 'endgame' is pretty much correct, or at least that's the feeling I get too. I don't think there's much more I have to say on the matter other than many modern developers prefer newer players to straight up play an easier version of their game before slowly lowering them into the real deal. It probably, statistically leads to fewer frustrated and overwhelmed players. As for Hades being better if it wasn't a roguelite, I'm not so sure on that. For example, I'd imagine it being significantly harder to fit thousands of lines of dialogue in a game that needs to end after World 10 or whatever. Or perhaps its the fact that only having 4 main levels allowed the developers to polish things/add content in other areas much more than they otherwise would have. That's not to say a roguelite run HAS to be short, anyways, but as I mentioned earlier perhaps that helps with the whole meta progression aspect. Thanks for reading! And honestly, I rather like that you're "the impossible-to-please critic," I don't think you'd have given me near as much to think about otherwise!
With hades, I'm not necessarily saying remove the existing content in exchange for more stages. Although that said I'd be fine with taking out the heat challenges if it meant more 'regular' content, although the heat stuff probably doesn't add much more dev time. But if budget is no concern, then I can dream! I suppose with Against the Storm there is a point worth making: you are referring to 'prestige levels', and personally I don't remember even seeing such a thing. Although I think I saw achievements about it, so there is a hint of something there. I suppose if the 'real' game comes 20 levels deep in a hidden difficulty setting, bringing that out on to the menu so it's clear it even exists is probably an easy start!
@@OffyDGG Have you looked into Supergiant's previous games that weren't roguelites? That might give you more of an idea what Hades might be like if it weren't a roguelite. Namely, Bastion and Transistor. They are great games, but they don't really have the staying power that Hades does. Prestige levels you won't see at first. It shows as "locked" under Viceroy difficulty. Once you complete a settlement on Viceroy, then Prestige 1 is unlocked and shows up. Then the subsequent prestige levels are unlocked by beating the previous one (i.e. beating prestige 1 unlocks prestige 2, and beating prestige 2 unlocks prestige 3, and so on). A system inspired by Slay the Spire. Each level has a different effect as well, it's not as simple as "give -1 to global resolve each prestige level." Prestige 1 makes you require 4 more reputation in order to win (bringing it to 18 total), Prestige 2 makes the storm last longer, Prestige 3 makes blightrot appear every 3rd year, it's pretty varied stuff, and all Prestige levels have the effects of the previous ones. I had a lot of fun climbing the ladder so to speak. It's very important to note that it wasn't like the game wasn't fun at all before that, but once you start getting up there, more game balance decisions and the like start making a bit more sense.
@@Wolfun1t I think I played a little Bastion, I don't remember especially liking it although I barely remember it at all so hard to say. Probably the things I like about Hades are too specific to that game to get a good comparison going. Anyway, this prestige system all sounds really good. All I can say is again it went under the radar for me, and I think that's probably a missed opportunity. I never thought such things would be in the game from what I saw in my playthrough, and I doubt it's meant to be a secret! Might be worth literally changing the system to call all difficulties 1-25 so that the earlier ones are obviously leading to a lot of new stuff - I thought I'd almost seen it all already.
Although I agree with your analysis about the RNG, the biggest thing that smooths out the randomness is the traders. Your can always get anything you want in any town by producing whatever you can locally and then trade for everything else. One "proof" the RNG doesn't matter is that there are playthroughs from other people where they do things like "always pick the option on the left." That shows that you don't really "need" any choices but they are there to give you an overwhelming advantage until you get used to the game. Then, you can increase the difficulty to start removing the advantages. That being said, I definitely agree that for new players a lot is given at once and then you immediately start increasing the pool before you've even scratched the surface of what was already there. Maybe they don't want players to think it is a mega grind to progress? Or maybe they're indirectly saying you shouldn't ever have all the things in your head anyway 😛
As an Australian I actually love the constant rain the game has; it’s the best thing going for it to me. Interesting thoughts on rougelikes: I’ve always said the same about free to play
@@R3GARnator that is an extremely good point :D have got that on my wishlist but reviews aren't that promising. might dig through my spam folder in the email and see if I ever got offered a free key.
The issue with this game isnt the randomness or even the fact its a roguelite. The issue with the game is the way progression conflicts with new player expectation. Since the definition of a roguelite directly impacts a games progression system, you can handwave and say the issue is "its a roguelite" since it involves the deeper progession issues The way the game works is that its a convuluted logistics game, but its not truly complicated, it has a lot of horizontal space, its a mile wide and a couple inches deep. You only needto understand logistics at the basic demand level: Food, building, fuel, and then to win yiu get amber and whatever your glades tell you to get. So thats the basic premise, rng or roguelite hasnt jumped in yet, you have a demand, and you are given choices on how you think you should meet the demand. Like any strategy game, the rng now jumps in to give you an excuse to need tp choose, but the fundamental issue is the horizontally built system in logistics The issue is a new player isnt tutorialized on the horizontal nature of the logistics system. I think its a great system, because it does away with the arbitrary "research" filler resource in so many games that pads out progression. The progession within a match is determined by your commitment to fufilling a logistical service "i.e I want to make a kiln next becauseI want to use up my wood for coal, and get some jerky" If all buildings were unlocked from the word go, you would have the dwarf fortress problem of not only finding the right building would be arcane, but know what or why to do next would be a mystery Really I think new players overcomplicate the game, each step in difficulty and metaprogession points to a new concept to focus on for your next run Each blueprint is telling you what you should build next, and each order is literally telling you what to do next, like a hint system. If you havent gone up in prestiges you may not get it, but when you get to the point villagers eat more, you will dial in on complex food as an objective, and all this complaining about roguelite and rng will disappear, who cares if the level is handcrafted or not when the problems and goals couldnt be any clearer?
I suppose I can't see that being the case - I think the rng would still be a detriment. It sounds like you're saying the limitations push you into doing certain things and so defacto tell you 'what to do'. But I am thinking more from the angle of 'what do I *want* to do' and potentially being frustrated that I don't get the building I want after it turns out to be too late to turn back on a plan. (Or I don't know the building tree well enough to be making meaningful decisions, which I think it a strong argument for at least showing the player the building tree at some point early on). I think this would be the case no matter how clear the problems or goals are, because it is more to do with how you choose to approach them (unless you are saying there is only 1 choice, which may indeed by the case if the rng falls that way). And the roguelite nature defines the game heavily for me - for example it is the reason why you can't build one economy for a long time, which was a major reason I ended up turning away from the game. So I can't see that not being a factor without huge changes, although since that would basically be a different game, isn't almost not even worth complaining about at this stage.
The problem with Roguelikes is that nothing matters, and when nothing matters gameplay gets repetitive and boring. We humans like to build things or a legacy that last, and roguelikes is like building a wall to minutes later someone destroy it. Its not fun, but there are people who like to watch paint dry, soo of course rhere are people who enjoy roguelikes...
That is such a reductive way to look at games. Does the fact that after you’re done playing tag with your kids, nothing about the game has changed, makes it a lesser experience? No, you have enjoyed the time spent with your kids and did a bit of exercise. Not everyone enjoys the same things so you can’t say ‘’we humans like to do this’’, that’s just not true Roguelikes and roguelites have been a greatly popular genre over the last decade. It clearly has merit and it’s worth analyzing what people love them. It’s pretty disrespectful to say that playing roguelikes is akin to watching paint dry. You can not enjoy something and be respectful of people who do enjoy that something. TLDR: you don’t enjoy roguelikes? More power to you, just don’t insult people who do.
I think this hits the core of what it takes for a game to feel worthwhile. So in in a roguelike, it is more about the real life achievement and the 'fun you had along the way', and less about achieving something in the game itself, or meaningfully changing the game world through your actions as in pretty much any other design. I think both are fine ways to approach a game of course. The thing is that was roguelikes usually have really good mechanics to provide that 'fun you had along the way', but I end up wishing the 'way' was less repetitive, or that it went new places. So I get conflicted opinions, as probably demonstrated in this video! I'd say the best approach is to lay out what exactly you find fun in a game, and then you can easily say that a game does or doesn't have it. but it's also wrong to say there is some issue with preferring it differently. For example, the devs of this game hype up the promising feeling of starting again repeatedly as a selling point in their marketing material - I have the opposite view of that design choice, but clearly it's a solid enough foundation that people looking for fun in a different way to me have gathered around. So it's not that it's as boring as watching paint dry, you just have to be wired to care about different thing not only in the game, but in how it affects you in real life. As mentioned in this video, I am probably wired the 'wrong' way so I often find fun mechanics wasted if there isn't some grand motivation or goal behind them. It's pretty annoying sometimes!
@@legendairenic6247 Yeah, but do you play tag with you kids every day? This is my point repetition and lack of variety in games is what makes players stop playing. This is why roguelikes add different builds/combat styles or overall story to give it variety and a end goal to reach. With no goal to try to reach players will stop playing when combat gets boring, and if the combat is boring people will not care aboth the end goal. No one wants to play tag everyday single day.
Was zoning out playing another game with this in the backround and then I hear "...we still don't have that meat or jerky but I can just be racist.", made me do a double take with my ears 😂
I get the feeling that Roguelikes with long gameplay loops appeal to people more interested in "control" (for lack of a better term,) than narrative drive: basically, taking a chaotic situation, fixing it, and then moving on because they get bored once things are stable. It's the kind of player who starts a game like Baulders Gate 3, puts it on the highest difficulty, and immediately rerolls all of the characters for optimized classes and stats. Problem is, these are always niche players, and so where they say, "I did everything I wanted to, so I don't see why this city matters anymore," most other people would say, "okay, that's the end of the player's story, but what's the end of the city's?"
I think I see what you mean. I sometimes feel like that kind of player myself, perhaps just enough to keep trying roguelikes and liking their ideas, but not enough to stick around. Well, the devs got my money all the same, so I suppose they needn't listen to my complaints now!
Your game design analysis is very insightful. I learned a lot with you, tho Game/Sound design is my hobby, someday it will be my career, and my dream will be to work with you one day.
I would go further and say it's my favourite example of a game I wished was not a roguelike. I played a few runs of it back in the day, and thought that I liked the combat and tactics, but not the rng, the time limit, or the fact I had to repeat the game. I remember someone saying "I play FTL because I want gaming to be miserable", and that was pretty much my experience too :D
I gave up early on this game. When I knew that it was so repetetive building up your towns. I don't think city-builders are suited to be roguelikes. The simplest explanation. I like roguelikes generally and love city-builders. But compare this game to roguelikes like FTL or Darkest Dungeon. There you see more clearly and get cooler stuff when you do certain things or make progression. Maybe there is the same here as another commenter mentioned but there needs to be more to draw you in if that is the case. You get new types of warriors or gear, or new ships and aliens in most other roguelikes. Another thing is the length too. Roguelikes should be short in the beginning and if they get longer the gameplay needs to be expanded and everything must feel bigger. Comparing this game to city-builders is almost not possible. It's really not a city-builder or "colony managment" game. Even if many city-builders won't let you see earlier cities once you've progressed, most city-builders like that let's you start with many buildings already set up or with specially designed scenarios that are more engaging. A game doesn't need combat but it would suit this game and fit very well if there were. The villagers just die to rng it feels like. It's an interesting concept, idea. It's well made and looks good. The lore is somewhat interesting too. But it's too messy and as you said harsh/complicated in some ways and weirdly forgiving/simple in other. Maybe it can get better when it's done or it's just not for me in the end. I'm glad lots of other people like it though, that it scratches someones itch. It is very unique.
I think I generally agree with you here. I felt the game is on to a good thing, but needs more of something (or less of something) to make it 'work' in the broadest sense - or for the broadest audience. The feeling that the repetition at the core of the game wasn't really a good idea is the one thing that stands out to me. But supposedly at higher difficulties it is more rewarding and repeats less frequently, so that might have changed things if I felt compelled enough to get that far - and that I stopped too early is a criticism in itself I suppose, since I certainly liked the game enough to keep going if I had felt it was worthwhile.
Got somewhat scared off playing it by what people were saying about it, however I'm still pretty interested in it. Feels like I need to do research and put aside time to make it work, which is holding me back atm.
I think I wish that is were for me, and I think that I might actually have enjoyed the endgame more than the beginning, from what I'm hearing from others. I think I am the right player to go all the way and appreciate the full meat *eventually*! But the beginning didn't interest me enough, ultimately.
L2P issue. You misunderstand how the game design works. Yes, the tutorial could be slightly more explicit about it. But the idea is to adapt to the situation. You do not have to pick your buildings immediately, nor the orders. You can play, open some of the map and build up the early bits with always available buildings and then start making choices once you know what is in 1-2 more glades. The RNG is a nonissue once you understand how the chains work. You just have to figure out what you have and what you need to prioritize when drafting buildings. Also seeing you playing very early - the unlocks very soon give you more choices - one out of 4 buildings, one out of 4 cornerstones etc. This gives you far more choice and unlocks also give you rerolls which also helps. Early low difficulty games you literally cannot really lose, the game is so easy, so while you may think RNG is "hosing" you, it does not matter. You pick from what you get and just play. It almost auto-wins at the lowest difficulty...
Isn't what you are suggesting what I do in the video and already say is good in the commentary? Sounds like you are trying to argue against me, but your comment is what I was saying about the game almost word for word. However, I say the easiness of it is a bad thing, as it 'waters down' or even invalidates the challenge. Maybe that is what we disagree on?
@@OffyDGG I commented mostly on the early parts of the video, haven't watched it to the end yet. The game tries to effectively let you learn by playing. So easier difficulty levels are laughably easy and even if you are fumbling around and do not know what you are doing, you will probably still win. This is trying to let you learn by doing rather than having some long and boring tutorials. Try whatever you want, do whatever you want. Eventually thru trial and error you should figure out how to win the first proper game. Then you find out about unlocks and have goals to go for (unlock more things!) and the difficulty selector is supposed to be switched (to get bigger rewards) as soon as you think things are too easy. Yes, if you stick to the easiest level things are too easy. That is done to allow this "learn by doing". I can assure you Prestige level games are not easy. If you ignore the difficulty selector, the game pushes you to bump it up eventually as you can't go further away from the city without increasing the difficulty. It is actually very well thought out design and the main issue is that people tend to overthink things and perhaps get choice paralysis - you have choices but you are unsure how to rate them. Tip: Just pick one and see how it goes. Eventually you figure out how the production chains work and what is important early vs what is important late and how to prioritize the picks. I have not yet seen a game where I could not make it work. By the time you are at Viceroy it is eminently possible to "lose" a round if you make poor choices. Especially if you ignore the storm and do something stupid like doing a forbidden glade event during storm that temporarily boosts hostility a lot and suddenly you are maxed on storm effects and things go real bad real fast.
@@Jarnis-v1c that sounds great. I only take issue with how you seem to blame me for this. If this stuff isn't apparent, isn't that just a case where the game needs to say pretty much what you just said to me? Perhaps it's more obvious to people in the community, but to me I didn't expect any of that, and it sounds like I missed out on good stuff because of it. A shame!
This is sort of the most boring game I've seen from you in a long time. It looks like a boring game even just visually. I felt I sort of glazed over the whole thing and didn't understand what was going on. Which might be part of the long form videos abridging a ton. I do honestly miss the more regular videos. Sorry I didn't like support TiC back in it's heyday. On rougelikes, have you heard of fear and hunger? Can't think of many other games to reccomend right now
Yeah this is one of those games, i suspected that it would be repetitive and confusing video since that is pretty much what the game is like, although I still liked it. I don't make so many videos these days just because I am no longer a 'full time youtuber' like I was for many years. It's really an hour a day max, mainly for fun at this stage. Been ages since I posted a TiC, but I actually have one recorded, just need to find the time to edit it somehow.
Sorry if I'm getting too personal or whatever but things have been difficult for me and I've failed at a lot and your videos are one of the few things I've like managed to enjoy@@OffyDGG
