Ash of Gods: Redemption is a game.

[rusty_shackleford]

It's not even a particularly good game. And it's a game that's a shameless rip-off of Banner Saga with lower production values. But I actually like it more than Banner Saga.

It might have actually been a decent-tier game if they didn't copy the awful round-robin combat mechanic directly from Banner Saga ***!!!THIS HAS BEEN FIXED!!!***. I first played it when it came out and it had a terrible translation which has been improved since then.
The game feels alien when you play it, and it's entirely because of the writing. The translation is still a bit rough and I'm not a speaker of «сука блять» so I can't even compare it to the original transcript. But the writing is… good. It's an adaptation of Sergey Malitsky's fiction series of the same name, written by Sergey Malitsky. It's probably one of the better written games on the market when taken as a whole, which is surprising considering how fast it was forgotten.

Also the woman on the promo art has hard nipples:


Any of you played this, especially after the post-release patches that fixed the terrible translation?

[Val the Moofia Boss]

the awful death spiral mechanic directly from Banner Saga.

What death spiral mechanic are you referring to? I recall that with the way the Banner Saga was designed, losing a few party members during a battle wasn't really a big deal compared to other SRPGs because you still got to move a character every other turn. Actually, having more characters was sort of a detriment since the enemy could gang up on one of your characters and it would take too long for you to regain control of that character to move him to safety before he was KOed. In fact, TBS had strategies built around using fewer characters than the maximum number you could deploy, abusing the game design so those few characters got more turns and investing as much exp as possible into those handful of characters.

[rusty_shackleford]

the awful death spiral mechanic directly from Banner Saga.

What death spiral mechanic are you referring to? I recall that with the way the Banner Saga was designed, losing a few party members during a battle wasn't really a big deal compared to other SRPGs because you still got to move a character every other turn. Actually, having more characters was sort of a detriment since the enemy could gang up on one of your characters and it would take too long for you to regain control of that character to move him to safety before he was KOed. In fact, TBS had strategies built around using fewer characters than the maximum number you could deploy, abusing the game design so those few characters got more turns and investing as much exp as possible into those handful of characters.

Your character deals less damage the less health you have.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

Your character deals less damage the less health you have.

Ah, forgot about that. I personally didn't feel that was a problem in TBS, and I beat TBS1 before it was nerfed. In TBS your strength/HP is protected by a second HP pool (armor), which has to be significantly whittled down before you can start taking significant strength damage, and the armor was easily recoverable if you had a mender in the party like Eyvind. TBS' AI was wonky in that half of the time enemies would go straight for your red HP bar and deal like 1 or 2 damage, rather than trying to whittle down your armor first. There were only a couple bosses in the trilogy who had such sheer strength that they could devastate your characters with their armor unbroken, namely Bellower in TBS1, Eyeless in 2, and

► Show Spoiler

Bolverk

in TBS2 and 3.

[Humbaba]

I was always put off by banner saga because their horns were drawn like absolute garbage, which really clashed with the rest of the otherwise well drawn stuff. It also looked just like anudda "lose this or lose that OOOOOOO HARD CHOICES" type game, which I'm extremely tired of at this point, because they're all the same and the choices aren't hard if all you lose isn't anything of permanence and amounts to "number go down".

[Val the Moofia Boss]

It also looked just like anudda "lose this or lose that OOOOOOO HARD CHOICES" type game, which I'm extremely tired of at this point, because they're all the same and the choices aren't hard if all you lose isn't anything of permanence and amounts to "number go down".

I felt that the choices were pretty straight forward. Don't do stupid stuff like having your men try to hold on to a heavy cart of gold while going down a steep cliff. Don't talk to sketchy fellows. Don't give in to peer pressure and kill babies. The choices do influence what ending you get but it's pretty easy to get the happy ending if you weren't doing evil stuff.

[rusty_shackleford]

the awful death spiral mechanic directly from Banner Saga.

What death spiral mechanic are you referring to? I recall that with the way the Banner Saga was designed, losing a few party members during a battle wasn't really a big deal compared to other SRPGs because you still got to move a character every other turn. Actually, having more characters was sort of a detriment since the enemy could gang up on one of your characters and it would take too long for you to regain control of that character to move him to safety before he was KOed. In fact, TBS had strategies built around using fewer characters than the maximum number you could deploy, abusing the game design so those few characters got more turns and investing as much exp as possible into those handful of characters.

Your character deals less damage the less health you have.

Woops, sorry, I was wrong. It's the other annoying thing.
The initiative system is round robin, which means if the enemy has one character left it gets to act for every single turn you make. Which means, completely counter to common sense, you should never leave strong opponents for last and kill off the weak first. Each weak enemy you kill makes them significantly stronger.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

if the enemy has one character left it gets to act for every single turn you make.

If there is only one enemy character left then the pillage mechanic kicks in where the enemy no longer gets to act every other turn. Instead every character on their team gets their turn, and then the last enemy unit gets their turn, and then your whole team gets their turn and so on. The only time an enemy unit gets turn after turn in a row nonstop is if you also only have one unit left, usually in duel battles like the final fight of TBS2.

I agree that the meta strategy of purposefully leaving low HP units alive so they can waste enemy turns incentivized by the game mechanics does feel a little odd/gamey/non-realistic, but I don't I feel games need to be super realistic. What matters most to me is if the game is fun to play. The Banner Saga 1 was one of those few games where once I beat it, I liked the gameplay so much that I immediately started another playthrough, skipping through the cutscenes and dialogue and spending hours planning which characters I wanted to build up and trying out different strategies. Strangely I didn't feel that way about the sequels. Maybe it's because they were easier, or I was as invested in the story of those games as much, or I didn't like the implementation of the perk system in 2 or dumping points into crit chance in 3.

[rusty_shackleford]

The initiative system is round robin, which means if the enemy has one character left it gets to act for every single turn you make. Which means, completely counter to common sense, you should never leave strong opponents for last and kill off the weak first. Each weak enemy you kill makes them significantly stronger.

Got a new combat system and apparently they're working on a 2.0 release.

One of the biggest changes is the new order of turns which was requested by many players. Now smaller squads will not get the advantage over bigger ones: all the characters must make a move to start a new round. There's a tiny advantage for a small teams left, though, as they are always the first to start a new round.

The exclusion is Blance — being a strong character who is able to destroy enemies all by himself, he can act after every enemy’s turn. The same is also true for Lo Pheng in his first battle against the Reaper.

Along with a bunch of other improvements. This appears unrelated to the 2.0 release, and is available now.
https://store.steampowered.com/news/app ... 6069986648


It's on sale at 75% off right now, and I can recommend it at that price if it looks interesting to you.


To reiterate what I originally stated, I really enjoyed the writing of the game. I'd probably place it (in terms of writing) closer to something like The Life and Suffering of Sir Brante, a vaguely familiar world but alien. I usually don't care about the writing in games unless it's offensively bad.

[Tweed]

Jokes on you, I already own it.

[Finarfin]

Got it for a buck instead

[1998]

Didn't like Banner Saga, not sure if I want to try this one

[A Chinese opium den]

The initiative system is round robin, which means if the enemy has one character left it gets to act for every single turn you make. Which means, completely counter to common sense, you should never leave strong opponents for last and kill off the weak first. Each weak enemy you kill makes them significantly stronger.

Got a new combat system and apparently they're working on a 2.0 release.

One of the biggest changes is the new order of turns which was requested by many players. Now smaller squads will not get the advantage over bigger ones: all the characters must make a move to start a new round. There's a tiny advantage for a small teams left, though, as they are always the first to start a new round.

The exclusion is Blance — being a strong character who is able to destroy enemies all by himself, he can act after every enemy’s turn. The same is also true for Lo Pheng in his first battle against the Reaper.

Along with a bunch of other improvements. This appears unrelated to the 2.0 release, and is available now.
https://store.steampowered.com/news/app ... 6069986648


It's on sale at 75% off right now, and I can recommend it at that price if it looks interesting to you.


To reiterate what I originally stated, I really enjoyed the writing of the game. I'd probably place it (in terms of writing) closer to something like The Life and Suffering of Sir Brante, a vaguely familiar world but alien. I usually don't care about the writing in games unless it's offensively bad.

Yes but is this game fun?

[rusty_shackleford]

Got another update
https://store.steampowered.com/news/app ... 1306886182

[Acrux]

I tried this last week. The new combat is pretty good but the writing is very obvious ESL and pretty painful to read at times.