Legends of Amberland II: The Song of Trees
Posted: December 16th, 2023, 15:18
This is a quick, placeholder review while I get my shit together and flesh it out with comparisons to the first game and a bit more detail.
I'm slow, lazy, and a bit retarded, so please be patient.
Just finished it:
Brief review for a brief game:
• On the old X-Play review scale 3/5: okay game rating. Worth playing if you're bored and like blobbers, but there's nothing special about it. Overpriced at $20+ in my opinion.
• Game worked fine, but the text has some bugs, including unlinked text to message plaques in a few places.
• It would be nice if the game kept notes about where you found important people like skill trainers. I forgot where one was an had to consult a guide.
• Skill trainers are not well laid out to pace them over the game. The best is the magic points trainers. The worst is the haggling trainers. (By the time you find #2, you'll just teleport to #3 because you found him way earlier.)
• Balance/area design is shaky with too many low level monster areas you just slice through at high level without any thought. One of the end areas you enter at about level 50 has only level 7 enemies you will likely one-hit with your melee front-liners.
• Randomized items in shops and chests leads to a lot of not useful junk items that sell for basically nothing (even the powerful ones).
• A daily healer spell (Iron Skin) completely negates the need for the use of anti-paralysis/petrification items the moment you get it pretty early on.
• Bards have two support spells to contribute that are nice to have but not essential like the healer class' Iron Skin spell. Otherwise not really useful. They can remove fear, but this should have been a healer magic, of course it wasn't so as to give bards something to (almost never) contribute.
• No real strategy to combat, other than to know to flee if you're in trouble.
• Special abilities are once per rest, not per in-game day. This makes some sense for the recovery abilities of mages and healers, but makes the abilities of the various fighting classes one-shots that are not actually useful.
• There is no real build variety. You'd be mad to put points into anything except knowledge for melee fighters (crit chance), dex for archers (they don't get a lot of extra crit from knowledge like the other fighters), and willpower for casters (mana points).
• One major difference is the effect resistance. You are no longer just immune/not immune to a special effect. You have a total rating per element/effect and it's compared to the power of the enemy/trap inflicting the potential effect/damage. Enemies use their level as the power. Traps are set to specific power levels.
• You can be completely immune if you have enough numerical resistance vs. the power level, but you can also have a partial % resistance chance if your resistance number is lower.
• Elemental resistance works much the same way. You have a rating and if it's high enough it'll reduce damage by the maximum 60%, but if your rating is lower, the % resist will also be. If it's too low, it'll be a 0% resist versus that source.
• the towns are mini-maps you walk around in now. It adds very little except access to a couple of mini-dungeons.
• There is only one magic shop in one town. It still costs crystals and never restocks. The items are really good, though. Instead, you can buy lesser magic items from specialty "guild" shops in every town for cash. I found a few good items, but they seem to be randomly generated on game start and most are therefore trash. You still have to find the captured artisan somewhere in the world before there's much in stock in the specific shop. The first town has the guy hidden up north in a dangerous dungeon that you won't get to until at least halfway through the game, and the items are pretty worthless by then. The other shops don't have the same problem.
Feel free to ask questions.
I'm slow, lazy, and a bit retarded, so please be patient.
Just finished it:
Brief review for a brief game:
• On the old X-Play review scale 3/5: okay game rating. Worth playing if you're bored and like blobbers, but there's nothing special about it. Overpriced at $20+ in my opinion.
• Game worked fine, but the text has some bugs, including unlinked text to message plaques in a few places.
• It would be nice if the game kept notes about where you found important people like skill trainers. I forgot where one was an had to consult a guide.
• Skill trainers are not well laid out to pace them over the game. The best is the magic points trainers. The worst is the haggling trainers. (By the time you find #2, you'll just teleport to #3 because you found him way earlier.)
• Balance/area design is shaky with too many low level monster areas you just slice through at high level without any thought. One of the end areas you enter at about level 50 has only level 7 enemies you will likely one-hit with your melee front-liners.
• Randomized items in shops and chests leads to a lot of not useful junk items that sell for basically nothing (even the powerful ones).
• A daily healer spell (Iron Skin) completely negates the need for the use of anti-paralysis/petrification items the moment you get it pretty early on.
• Bards have two support spells to contribute that are nice to have but not essential like the healer class' Iron Skin spell. Otherwise not really useful. They can remove fear, but this should have been a healer magic, of course it wasn't so as to give bards something to (almost never) contribute.
• No real strategy to combat, other than to know to flee if you're in trouble.
• Special abilities are once per rest, not per in-game day. This makes some sense for the recovery abilities of mages and healers, but makes the abilities of the various fighting classes one-shots that are not actually useful.
• There is no real build variety. You'd be mad to put points into anything except knowledge for melee fighters (crit chance), dex for archers (they don't get a lot of extra crit from knowledge like the other fighters), and willpower for casters (mana points).
• One major difference is the effect resistance. You are no longer just immune/not immune to a special effect. You have a total rating per element/effect and it's compared to the power of the enemy/trap inflicting the potential effect/damage. Enemies use their level as the power. Traps are set to specific power levels.
• You can be completely immune if you have enough numerical resistance vs. the power level, but you can also have a partial % resistance chance if your resistance number is lower.
• Elemental resistance works much the same way. You have a rating and if it's high enough it'll reduce damage by the maximum 60%, but if your rating is lower, the % resist will also be. If it's too low, it'll be a 0% resist versus that source.
• the towns are mini-maps you walk around in now. It adds very little except access to a couple of mini-dungeons.
• There is only one magic shop in one town. It still costs crystals and never restocks. The items are really good, though. Instead, you can buy lesser magic items from specialty "guild" shops in every town for cash. I found a few good items, but they seem to be randomly generated on game start and most are therefore trash. You still have to find the captured artisan somewhere in the world before there's much in stock in the specific shop. The first town has the guy hidden up north in a dangerous dungeon that you won't get to until at least halfway through the game, and the items are pretty worthless by then. The other shops don't have the same problem.
Feel free to ask questions.