DeathSpank

[thorn]

Just finished Deathspank and, despite not having ever played an RPG before in my life, thoroughly loved it. Gonna hold off from buying Thongs of Virtue until the Steam sales though. It's not like I don't have a massive backlog of games to work on in the meantime.

Has anyone else here got it on the PC-Steam? Does clicking on the Acheivements button in the menu do anything for you? What about on the Quests screen - did the up and down arrows ever stop working?

[MrHoatzin]

It is really glitchy all around, menu in particular. I am still having what the Hothead support has termed "BINK video issues outside of their control".

The second game, what little I've played of it, makes a slew of improvements over the first one, to the point where I am confused as to why, considering they were built concurrently. It is as if someone sat down, separated by a long period of off time, and tasked him/herself with a brutal post-mortem before development.

D:ToV plot spoiler:

LOL at the "War against Generosity." Such a smooth yet biting bit of satire.

[MrHoatzin]

Just finished Deathspank and, despite not having ever played an RPG before in my life...

Wow, Deathspank is really on My First RPG™ from Fisher Price™ level as far as RPGs go… It is a very deliberately scaled down thing. I don't think you can even honestly base your opinion of RPGs in general on it…

[miffy495]

Have played both to (thourough, all achievements and sidequests) completion on PC and have to say the second is so much better than the first. Also almost twice as long by my playtimes. I never had any issues with Steam achievements or anything like that, but I would always pop up the shift+tab thing instead of trying it from the menus. I guess I'm pretty lucky that the only issues I had were the way that they broke their "continue" option after the first TOV patch. If your save was at any of the three outhouses near Beaux Kuckelle, your game would crash to desktop until you went in and edited a config file. Way to go, Hothead.

[thorn]

Wow, Deathspank is really on My First RPG™ from Fisher Price™ level as far as RPGs go… It is a very deliberately scaled down thing. I don't think you can even honestly base your opinion of RPGs in general on it…

Oh, I wasn't. It was just that I wasn't sure when I picked up the game whether I'd enjoy it or not. That's why I didn't preorder ToV when it was 20% off - I wanted to get to the end of the first one and see how it went.

[Erkki]

So the Mac version finally appeared on Steam and I bought it. Really enjoying it so far, I was expecting something much worse based on some reviews.

Thongs of Virtue is a separate game, right? not a DLC?

[syntheticgerbil]

It's separate but it's probably recommended to play Thongs of Virtue second since the original Deathspank as envisioned was cut into two.

Thongs of Virtue should have that DLC dungeon and the extra second player character available to purchase separately though.

[Erkki]

What I love about this game so far (over 30% complete I think) is how it uses and makes fun of RPG cliches while somehow seeming more original just by not taking those cliches seriously.

[toblix]

Having just misunderstood the inventory system, I just grinded both my crossbows. Is there any way I can get them back?

Also, at first I thought the four weapon slots were reserved for special kinds of weapons, but it's starting to seem they're not. Is there a reason I should use more than two different weapons (melee and ranged) other than the cases where the enemies are resistant? What's the deal with the purple weapons? They charge up or something, and have chevrons?

[Tanukitsune]

I'm not sure, but there is a garbage bin for lost items... although I doubt it's there.

The several weapon slots are for combos, if memory serves me well you do more damage and even knock back some enemies if you get the counter high enough and the combos only happen when you use a different weapon from the last one?

I'm not sure what you mean by purple weapons, but certain weapons do special moves when the justice meter is full?

[toblix]

Seems there are ordinary weapons, like sword and axe, which just work like normal weapons. But then there are weapons with fancy names, purple backgrounds and chevrons that look like level-up things. Should I just run around with these instead of bothering with the "non-magical" stuff?

Also, what is the downside to dying? Seems like I'm not losing any money or XP or anything.

Will I be introduced to the combo stuff later, maybe? I've done the Heybenstance quest, so I figured I was supposed to know it all by now...

[Tanukitsune]

Oh yeah, the ones with the "level-up" symbols are the ones that do special attacks when the justice meter is filled!

Like I said, you do less damage if you don't combo, but you don't have to make mad combos, you could just use one weapon if you wanted to...

If you die in a cave the money will be gone forever because the warp is OUTSIDE the cave, and the enemies health will be back, but no dying doesn't really matter that much in this game...

I don't really know... Since I liked the funny comments he makes with each tutorial message I listened to all of them before the game ever started!

[MrHoatzin]

The game'll inform you how to do things along the way.

Plain weapons with no green backgrounds have been outclassed by other weapons you carry. The chevrons only appear on the super fancy special weapons, and signify the level of the weapon. You will find magical weapons with more chevrons along the way. You will also eventually get more crossbows, so it is not much of a loss at this point. The non-special weapons you will get will generally be a little stronger hitpointwise than the comparable magical weapons, so there is still a use for them.

[toblix]

Thanks!

[Erkki]

A good idea might be to use one special weapon and one high damage normal weapon. This way you still get the special attack when the justice meter is full.

I usually have one set where both weapons are melee and another set where one is ranged.

If you can't find any crossbows for a while, I think the separate bolts probably don't require a crossbow? I'm not sure if you can put the bolts into weapon slots, I put them in potion slots and used from there.

[MrHoatzin]

You can put anything anywhere. I would replace the crossbow with them.

[thorn]

A good idea might be to use one special weapon and one high damage normal weapon. This way you still get the special attack when the justice meter is full.

Yeah, this is what I did.

I had one set of a normal weapon and a purple-glowy weapon and the second set had the crossbow and an elemental weapon that was relevant to what I was currently fighting (which I only really ended up using when I was fighting ghosts, as I could never work out what other enemies were vulnerable to)

[Erkki]

Before playing it, I somewhy always had the opinion that DeathSpank was a short game. Well, it took me 17 + 22 (Thongs of Virtue) hours to complete. That's about 40 hours, which is relatively long by today's standards and even not very short for an RPG.

I'm surprised it was priced that low. I got both parts for 12€ each just a few days before the Steam holiday sale started.

[edit] I'm not saying there should be a strong correlation between price and length. I guess what I'm trying to say is that DeathSpank seems to have been mostly underrated in both its size and how good a game it is. Or maybe that's just my impression. Well, at least it got some humour awards.

[ThunderPeel2001]

Before playing it, I somewhy always had the opinion that DeathSpank was a short game. Well, it took me 17 + 22 (Thongs of Virtue) hours to complete. That's about 40 hours, which is relatively long by today's standards and even not very short for an RPG.

I'm surprised it was priced that low. I got both parts for 12€ each just a few days before the Steam holiday sale started.

[edit] I'm not saying there should be a strong correlation between price and length. I guess what I'm trying to say is that DeathSpank seems to have been mostly underrated in both its size and how good a game it is. Or maybe that's just my impression. Well, at least it got some humour awards.

I look forward to playing it

[miffy495]

Do it. It's fantastic. The second came out a week after I beat the first, and I still wanted to play the damn thing. I still haven't played New Vegas because it came out a few months after I beat Fallout 3, so I figured I'd have Deathspank fatigue in a similar way. No such thing. And looking at my Steam play times, it took me about 15 hours per installment, contrary to my earlier assumptions, so it ends up being a great 30-ish hour experience.

[CaptainFish]

I gotta say, I love the layout of the controller set up page. It may use the xbox controller buttons, but it places them in a way that it's so easy to set up any dual stick controller with ease. It's something a lot more games should do, especially when they make use of the diamond shape for button layouts in game. Like Assassin's Creed's buttons for the different contextual actions or weapons, for example.

[MrHoatzin]

Ack, wtf, I just killed the nun yesterday and today I am trying to run the game, and I can start it up and change around menus, but whenever I hit "continue" the game starts loading, changes the music to regular walking around music and then crashes on me.

Time to see if Hothead has any solutions to my woes.

EDIT: This helped.

Edited December 26, 2010 by Kingzjester

[miffy495]

Yeah, I had the same issue, resolved the same way. Had I arrived here in time, I would have pointed you to that link.

[thorn]

Has anyone else had an issue in the PC version of unresponsive buttons? In the main menu, the Acheivements and DLC buttons give a clicky sound but no other response. In the Quest page, the up and down arrow buttons do nothing. Hothead support say they can't reproduce it so I'm on my own. This has happened in both Deathspank and ToV.

I also had a bug yesterday where only one of the the Altars near the nun had its attendant near it. Thankfully, quitting and restarting fixed it.

[elmuerte]

damnit ... savegame crashing