The Swedish Apocalypse (Krater)

[Irishjohn]

Hello all,

Any experience out there with this game? The handful of comments I found online were from people who really enjoyed the beta. It looks intriguing. I'm also mildly amused by the stress on the final bullet point, that you can play offline if you choose. Freedom!

http://store.steampowered.com/app/42170/

[Murdoc]

http://www.giantbomb.com/quick-look-krater/17-6239/

Seems kind of cool, looks nice too.

[Irishjohn]

Cheers, I don't check Giantbomb very often anymore. Off to have a look!

[Korax]

I'm having a good time with it so far, but there's a bit of a problem with the game not explaining things to you. I'm okay with having to figure out some things, like crafting and using implants/boosters on characters. Those are easy enough to understand after a minute of digging around the character menus. Then there are things like how characters have a max level (5 or 10) that's not the game's true level cap (15, I think). Nothing came up to tell me this. I just noticed that character's hadn't leveled in a while, and that they weren't gaining any more experience when killing things. Now, it's easy enough to hire a new guy with a higher level cap, and doesn't really take much grinding to bring them up to speed, but the system wasn't explained or presented in an obvious enough way that I could figure out what was happening until I had pretty much hit the wall where enemies became to strong to defeat without heavy losses.

Another thing I really like, though, is the music. It's some great old-school sci-fi synth that fits, but is also kind of dissonant when playing behind the brightly-colored art style.

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[Twig]

I have been interested in this game for a while but have heard lots of bug reports.

I'll probably get it eventually, anyway. Especially since I know co-op is in the works (or is already out?).

[Murdoc]

I really liked the music from the quick look and the art is really nice. It's the sort of fidelity I'd like Torchlight to have been if they were going for a lighter/goofier feel. (backstory: I think Torchlight was awesome, but couldn't get into it because of the art)

I dunno if it's my type of game though because of the dissonance. It seems to be taking a few staples from the things I do like, Fallout 1/2 and Diablo... but I think it just reminds me that I'd rather be playing those other games.

I like that it's set in Sweden though, but didn't get much of a feeling for that from the quicklook.

[Nachimir]

I liked the look of this but hadn't paid it much attention. The quicklook has put it on a list of games I'll definitely get; it reminds me of a lot of things I liked in other games from Warcraft III onward.

[Nachimir]

Played this for far too long tonight, and I like it.

I don't quite get why the guy doing the quick look didn't understand why you could select units individually; it feels familiar with even a little RTS experience; micro is vital when something starts getting hammered. That said, the game does tend to pick okay formations and put your most tank like unit at the front. Taunt powers are really useful for managing fights too.

It reminds me of a bunch of other RTS and RPGs, but brightly coloured and a bit silly instead of GrimDark and melodramatic. Lovely

[Irishjohn]

Played this for far too long tonight, and I like it.

I don't quite get why the guy doing the quick look didn't understand why you could select units individually; it feels familiar with even a little RTS experience; micro is vital when something starts getting hammered. That said, the game does tend to pick okay formations and put your most tank like unit at the front. Taunt powers are really useful for managing fights too.

It reminds me of a bunch of other RTS and RPGs, but brightly coloured and a bit silly instead of GrimDark and melodramatic. Lovely

Fantastic. This plus the soundtrack is definitely selling me on this game.

[Korax]

The last patch mitigated the problems with low character caps by adding a way to train characters into the next level cap tier (or something like that, haven't played it again since the update). That pretty much takes care of my biggest early-game complaint.

[Nachimir]

Yeah, that makes loads of sense. I hadn't recruited anyone by this point, so the first mission where you have to add someone to your roster: I just haven't used him because he's level 0 and everyone else is level 5.

Oh, I had performance problems on a macbook pro running win7 via bootcamp: Disabling v-sync helped a lot, but it still stutters a bit in towns no matter what resolution it's running at. I wish there were more graphics options and you could get rid of some of the fancier shaders.

[Raff]

This is a great surprise, never heard of it until just recently. It has a nice tone, the swedish angle is nice and fresh, the RTS squad control and various features that would have been misguidedly cut in most projects, keep it from feeling like another diablo clone.

The hotbar is bugged, I can't reorder my powers properly, but not run into anything else.

[Nachimir]

Levelling is weird. It takes almost no time to get a character up to a level cap, then you have to visit a bootcamp trainer and pay to open up the next tier. I never have to grind to level, but every so often have to grind to get the money to keep levelling.

Also, took me a shamefully long time to realise valuables were only useful for selling.

[Nachimir]

I just got back to this after nearly two weeks away.

Strike one: 1.6GB patch to download ¬¬

Strike two: First cave I go into feels exactly the same as every other cave in the game, just a bit tougher.

Strike three: Hitting max level cap on all characters, really quickly, then getting very suddenly killed, several times over, on various levels of a threat level 7 cave. Because my medic occasionally strayed into range of a second group of enemies. Or ran toward them instead of throwing a grenade.

This was nice at first, but after the first few towns, it's so linear and repetitive. You constantly trade and grind for just a few more DPS, and fights are just a matter of hammering exactly the same hotkeys every time until stuff is dead. I have a very strong suspicion that the project leads are all from art backgrounds. It's beautiful to a fault (no, really. It runs like a dog sometimes and there are loads of graphical effects you can't turn off), and the art continually varies, but the weapons, the game design, the maps, the fetch quests, everything, are all so very repetitive once you get out of the early game.

I can't bring myself to play it anymore. I can feel my brain switching off, it's like watching daytime TV or something.

[Tanukitsune]

I got this one in an indie bundle and I've been playing in on and off, it's the only game I've playing "on and off".

I came here wanting to see what others thought of it and to confirm my suspicions. True, nobody has posted here in over six months, but the complaints are the same that were worrying me... It is repetitive, I spent most of the game killing wolfs, bears and rats and when I encountered the first human enemy they took me down pretty quick.

And yet... unlike other repetitive games I am questioning whether to quit or not. It's quite beautiful and colorful for an apocalypse game... I just looked up a Let's Play of it and the spot where the player is seems the same as every one I've encountered yet. A part of me is just saying I should quit before the disappointment arrives, but another part thinks I shouldn't quit and that maybe I won't get bored of it.

[Dewar]

I got this on a steam sale, but haven't started it yet. My understanding is that patches have continued over the last 6 months to try and add some more content to the game, but I don't know how much.

[elmuerte]

Started playing it yesterday, so far it's okish (picked it up with some indie bundle). The level cap is weird. It has nice music though.

[elmuerte]

4.7 hours in ... wth am I doing here anyway? The levelcap is really dumb, now I have to grind to get enough money to go too bootcamp so that I can level up my characters enough to survive the next story quest

[Tanukitsune]

I'm still trying to play a mission or two every day, I don't know if I really like it or not... I haven't quit, yet I'm not playing it as much as any other game...

I just noticed that you have to pay to raise the level cap too, it doesn't seem to bother me yet for some reason.

[Tanukitsune]

I think I finally and officially quit this game, all you do is enter caves with either boars, bears, wolves or some sort of vermin or thugs with spears or guns to get a thing and then enter a cave that looks the same and you get another thing and do it ad nauseum.

 

I guess the reason I kept playing is because looks nice and the world looks interesting, but it's like taking a bite into a Kinder Egg and finding no toy inside.... I have no idea if that made any sense.

[Forbin]

I think I finally and officially quit this game, all you do is enter caves with either boars, bears, wolves or some sort of vermin or thugs with spears or guns to get a thing and then enter a cave that looks the same and you get another thing and do it ad nauseum.

 

I guess the reason I kept playing is because looks nice and the world looks interesting, but it's like taking a bite into a Kinder Egg and finding no toy inside.... I have no idea if that made any sense.

The only thing I don't get is that you bite into the kinder surprise eggs.  Most people break them with their hands then eat the shells.

[Tanukitsune]

Well, sometimes I like to take one bite before opening it... XP

[Nachimir]

I'm a little sad to hear it; was hoping that they'd patched it in the past few months and made it worth playing more.

[Tanukitsune]

I was thinking about the game some more and it not's only how repetitious the levels are, it's character's themselves. they only have two special attacks per character during the whole game, leveling them only let's you add special stats to the attack, which means you can do crazy stuff like making a stomp attack that heals, but... You still only have two attacks per character.

 

A minimal moveset would be O.K. for another, shorter, genre, but this is an RPG, dammit!

[Nachimir]

Yeah, even mixing characters, it's a such a limited set of interactions. Once you have the timing down, there's either nothing to it or you just have to grind in lower level areas for better equipment.