Action RPGs (aka. Min/Max Corner)

IF you are a slave to loot-based, min/max ARPGs like I am then here is a place to share thoughts on games that you think are must-play and others that are must avoid...

Wolcen: Lords of Destruction - When I first started playing this game is was in very early alpha, but what drew me to it was how it's leveling system breathed some life into that skill tree system, and how open ended the system actually is. As a genre game this would fall somewhere between Diablo III and POE but, unlike those two titles, there are no defined character classes. You build a character by learning skills (both martial and magical) and build you own combo attacks. The way this works is your character will always enter combat with a full mana bar ("umbra" in this game) and spending that resource builds rage, and rage fuels your martial attacks. Using a skill earns levels in that skill, and at various points you are given an option of two separate perks for that skill (ie. do you want shoot two fire balls or have it cost half as much umbra?). THe sum total is combat that lives up to the name... when you destroy mobs it really feels like you are the lord of destruction.

I would say the skill tree is most like POE, though, as your skill points are spend on passive augments to your active attack skills. Some of the more interesting, for example, involve unlocking spell damage that scales off of Strength to promote a sword and spell build, or faster rage build off of spell casting for the same purpose. The skill system is also build on concentric rings, and skill gems unlock in procession, like POE. THe twist is that the concentric rings can be turned such that progressing through one ring doesn't necessarily lead to a higher ring in the same field, you can turn the ring so that when you reach the end of progressing in the first ranged (dexterity) ring it will unlock the layer two tank ring, and so on.

Lots of fun, endless character customization options and things go boooooom.

Warhammer 40k: Inquisitor - Martyr - This game has eaten a LOT of my time lately as it has been approaching beta release. Right now the story has not been implemented, and the game plays like a huge Warhammer 40k sandbox, which is fine by me. Unlike pretty much every other ARPG in existence, Martyr sets aside the Game+ mechanic by essentially dropping up in a game is a huge, arcing gear/level progression and a story that pretty much forces you in to a series of mini-grinds to gear up for the next stage of the story.

While Martyr has established classes (Crusader, Psycher and Assassin) each class is hugely customizable to the point that all classes can fill the same roles in any number of ways. Character leveling is also interesting in that the skill modification skill tree (see: POE) is account based, rather than character based, so every time you start a new character you will get the number of skill points that you have earned for the account, giving each new character a rather substantial head start. Attack skills are weapon based in a system very similar to Guild Wars 2. If you run a Bolt Gun you will always have the same 4 attacks, but how those attacks are used really depend on the buffs you give them in the skill tree (to an extent) and your various gear bonuses. On top of the skill tree there is also perks that are account based. You start the game with one perk slot open and can unlock an additional two by the time you reach your account cap level of 80. These perks probably need some work as they range from fairly useless to ungodly overpowered at this point. Each perk is unlocked by completing Heroic deeds, which are essentially this game's version of achievements. For instance, you can unlock a perk that increases base weapon damage by 30% and the cost of no longer doing critical hits if you kill 1000 enemies with grenades. I've never been a guy who cares about achievements in games, so giving them actual utility is welcome.

That said, right now there is a certain perk that makes you take 20% more damage when your health is over 50%, and take 40% less damage when your health is below 50%. This is pretty broken (and I love it) because armor and some gear offer a flat damage mitigation off of NET damage taken, so if you are hit by a net 100 damage and have 60 mitigation you take 40. With the perk active that same attack (think DOT flamethower) would do 60 damage per tick until you hit 50% health and then ZERO damage after that. My Crusader runs through missions at 50% health almost constantly and impervious to attacks with damage below about 150.. meaning I really only worry about bosses. Add to that the existence of attack type mitigations on gear and you can make characters pretty easily that are simply immune to certain attack types.

Character based levels right now only determine which weapons you can use, and become an after thought after level 20 when you unlock the last items and weapons in the game. This could use a lot of work since there are 30 levels to go after you unlock all weapons. The only thing that happens on hiting a new level after than is you get a reward cache of some weapons, armor and gear that are usually vendor trash.

Crafting is also pretty detailed and essential to early progression, but becomes pretty pointless in late game when you start to get kitted in relic-level gear. At that point the extent to which you can craft is in fusing a piece of relic gear to 4 other pieces of relic gear to get a much more powerful version of that item.

Anyway, the scope of Martyr is jaw dropping. I have sunk about 80 hours in to the game and have just approached max gear score in the alpha of 1500 and just realized that the alpha only covers about 20% of the game world, with the taking place in just the first of 5 (?) star clusters. Add to that the boast by the dev team (need a grain of salt with that) that their intention is to eventually pull every race and faction from WH40k into the game through DLC. Essentially GW has gifted the developers with a previously unmentioned section of the galaxy in WH40K canon to develop as they see fit. The current quest line pits Human Inquisitor PCs against Chaos, Nurgle and Rebel Factions with future plans to deal with incursions to the sector by Orks, Undead etc. etc.

Very excited about this game. It will be in a short beta to test the quest line, but it is a mostly finished product and will go full release in April.

There's Borderlands, and then there's everything else.

Velvet Elvis said:

There's Borderlands, and then there's everything else.

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Borderlands is indeed great, though I found the pre-sequel to be pretty lack-luster. The whole oxygen mechanic was annoying.

But I still have a special place in my heart for the third person iso-syle ARPGs. But I wouldn't mind another Borderlands title.

Well, INQUISITOR has been delayed to June 5th -- which is old news for those of us following the game since the official release day was supposed to be last Friday.

I'm not really all that worried about it though since all that seems to be missing in the game is the story line, the mechanics of the game have been pretty solid for a while.

There is a final beta coming out on Monday that should be the pre-Final, complete with most of the story elements, so I'll probably give that a try, but I won't play too much of it since there will be one last character wipe before the final release, so I'm not going to get too attached to grinding the new toon.

Wolcen: Lords of Destruction - The game has entered Beta, with a complete Act I, and it has improved tremendously since I began playing. Granted, that was alpha, so...

The combat system really is a great step forward for the genre. There is a meaningful hybridization system between meleers, ranged and magic... thoiugh, as of this writing there is only one logical choice, or.. well, two... and for obvious reasons.

The system works like a normal ARPG when it comes to magic. You have a mana pool ("will" in this game) that you cast spells from, but you alse have a "rage" pool that you execute melee and ranged skills with. Will works the way you expect. You enter combat with 100% of your will, it gets drained as you cast. Casting spells also dump some of the lost will into the rage pool. With this system it is possible to play a hybrid class that opens with magic and finishes of CCs with rage skills. Good system.

As such, pure mages play just as you would expect. Rage declines over time, and some of the rage decline is sent back to the Will pool, allowing you to seesaw back and forth, but it isn't a perfect engine so you will need to occasionally prime the system with a will or a rage potion (they missed a boat here... the rage potion should totally be alcohol).. but that is where the system falters, at least in early game. Since rage deteriorates, you will never enter a fight with 100% rage, you will need to build rage in order to do moves.. that either means you spam weak attacks to build rage as a pure meleer/ranged or you down rage potions, either way is sub-optimal when a pure wizard starts ever fight with 100% Will and can just unload on enemies from the start. My beam mage obliterates everything on screen before my will runs out, and if the will does run out I also pack a pistol, a weapon whose skills use rage.

For this reason the hybrid mage is the best class by far, with a pure mage coming in second.

As an ARPG, though, it is really rather good. It is Diablo 3 with innovation and no set classes. In Wolcen the class system only grants you your starting skills, but you can really make your character whatever you want within the system. The one caveat being that all skills are tied to weapon type, so you have to dual wield 1H weapons if you want to do hybrid.

jmotivator said:

Borderlands is indeed great, though I found the pre-sequel to be pretty lack-luster. The whole oxygen mechanic was annoying.

But I still have a special place in my heart for the third person iso-syle ARPGs. But I wouldn't mind another Borderlands title.

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lolwhut? Borderlands the Pre-sequel was my fav edition for one reason: you get to play as Handsome Jack! I'd kill for a mod that allows you to play him in Borderlands 2.

PoS said:

lolwhut? Borderlands the Pre-sequel was my fav edition for one reason: you get to play as Handsome Jack! I'd kill for a mod that allows you to play him in Borderlands 2.

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I stand by my statement. If I want to play the game of watching my oxygen supply I will play Subnautica.

jmotivator said:

I stand by my statement. If I want to play the game of watching my oxygen supply I will play Subnautica.

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The oxygen thing was only a minor annoyance in the early game. There's tons of gear to alleviate it.

I'm a huge fan of HJ. Even my merc unit in Battletech is named the Handsome Jacks. :mrgreen:

PoS said:

The oxygen thing was only a minor annoyance in the early game. There's tons of gear to alleviate it.

I'm a huge fan of HJ. Even my merc unit in Battletech is named the Handsome Jacks. :mrgreen:

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I gathered that! :lol:

A few new titles thrown into the mix... some more complete than others...

Last Epoch - an indy ARPG with all you shoudl expect from an indy try-hard title. I have the beta, haven't played it yet. Will give my first impressions shortly. I'm going to put in 10 hours or so to get a feel for it.

Torchlight Frontiers - A new Torchlight would be great, though that game has kind of soured with my over time. It seems to get everything right but still missed long term with me. I think it was the lack of an interesting mid game, and the weakness of the boss fights.

An aside, as nice at it seems at first glance, I am getting to that point where I would like to do away with most of the item modification systems.. they seem to be an appology for systems with impossible RNG requirements for good weapons. Torchlight maybe not so much since you really didn't need to grind at all in that game, just earn money to mod your existing weapons.

Cheezem crow, as the old folks say, apparently Grim Dawn has just received a massive new content patch as well.

Truly it's the golden age of ARPGs.

Last Epoch - Ok, let me preface this by saying what is probably obvious... I like indy games, I like supporting indy games, and I like following indy games through development by, when possible, playing the beta games and giving feedback. I have, as should also be obvious, a rather think skin when it comes to quirks and bugs if the core game is mechanically sound, fun and/or innovative.

Having said that... I do not like Last Epoch. some of what I don't like may be due to it being Beta, but from my experience, most of what I don't like largely isn't...

First off, I was pleasantly surprised to see the game download was 39GB... 39GB means lots of content right? Well... that remains to be seen, but I haven;t been wowed by the art assets in the game.

I am aware that art assets can be place holders for future art that is still in production... I think back, for example, to the very early days of Sea of Thieves and the absurd place holder avatars and animations that, by release, become some of the most immersive visuals in a game of it's type. But in LE I see no variation to art standards that would differentiate work in progress from finished art that you would expect in a game whose art is still developing. Everything in the game uses low polygon models and rudimentary animations that feel more like a 2D Sprite based game than a modern title.

it feels old, and not in a good way.

The story also is somewhat interesting... essentially it is a time traveling adventure with big bad people going through time to do bad things. Great! Sounds intriguing... but... it really isn't implemented in a way that you might find interesting. In the time I have played it I have traveled through 1200 years or so of this world's history and it has had less variability than, stay, traveling in Earth history from 500 BC to 700AD... and sertainly nothing as dramatic as traveling from 800 AD to 2000 AD. the only thing that seemed to change was the bestiary, and even that is minimal.

What the time travely part of the game does is confuse, at least early on. Trying to find a shop in the game early on has you trying to figure out which epoch the shop was in, and then figuring out how to return to that epoch. But selling gear gives you gold that, at as of this build of the game, has limited use. There is 1 shop per epoch that I can see and they all have with one page of gear, and it all generally sucks.

I'd also like to say I like the game mechanics but really they are also boring. It might come back to the piss poor art, but the spells also lack the pyrotechnics.. or even the visual cues that you would expect... grind to level up a skill to be able to imbue your weapon with fire? Great... and you can tell it's working because.... the damage numbers are slightly higher than before.

It's getting boring just writing about it so I am going to stop. I have no clue how this game got such a high Steam rating...

I'll revisit the game periodically and if they ever get their act together I'll let you know.

Torchlight Frontiers has apparently taken an ass woopin' from Alpha testers, and probably for a good reason. From what I have read on the sordid story, the Torchlight crew... once made up of disgruntled Diablo developers, were building a Torchlight game that was essentially the Diablo III initial release model... well, sort of. It sounded like if a phone game for the PC. "Free to Play", with a real money store. Blech.

Well, Today they issued an announcement (which was the trigger for me to research what happened) that said, essentially, "SORRYSORRYSORRY!"

They announced that Torchlight Frontiers model was scrapped, and the assets have been transitioned to a new title: Torchlight III

They are keeping almost everything, but scrapping the progression system and some of the assets that don't fit into the new (read: Old) model.

One major change for the better: They are splitting online and offline play. Torchlight III will be fully playable solo, offline, like Torchlight I & II. The online experience will, based on the description, work like PoE with shared multiplayer space in cities while leaving the cities drops you (and party members) into a private instance. I like that system.

In the process they also moved the distribution back to Steam and made it a premium game.

That last bit was weird to me because the best thing about the Torchlight series was it was the most complete and largest ARPGs on the market for a mere $20.... it was always a great bargain.

No idea how far back this pushed development, but it sounds like much of the mechanics of the new system can be pulled forward from Torchlight II... so maybe less of a setback than I'm expecting.

On a weird coincidence, completely separate from the Torchlight III announcement today, I decided to go back to Torchlight II this past week for another spin.

While the gameplay seems very dated compared to the modern ARPGs I have been playing on lately, the boss fights are surprisingly more fun and varied than I remembered. Granted, maybe part of that is the discovery that when you create a solo LAN game you get Diablo-style map resets when you restart the game. This was a nice bit of comfort because one the the things I never linked about Torchlight series is that in solo play you couldn't farm story bosses. Playing the LAN version and checking "Map Reset" when firing up the game allows to you go back and farm dungeons. Yay!

Now, there are a ton of things not great. While the game is 3D, the characters still turn and direct attacks on a 16 point turn like an old sprite-based game. This doesn't matter if you platy a character that does sweeping strikes, but ranger combat suffers since the further the enemy is away the better the chance they are in the deadzone between your limited facing limits. That sucks.

Also, the game queues commands in the background, so often when you need to react to a new threat you find your character isn't responding to your new commands because they are cycling through the buffer.

Hit box size still sucks and all but forces you into AOE style attacks to make sure you can hit your targets (compounding the facing limitations for ranged attacks), for ranged fights it makes ranged even more difficult since miss-clicking a target at range with your base attack means you just ordered a move-to-spot command which isn't always a great idea.

It's still fun, but it feels old... I wouldn't mind if Torchlight III was just Torchlighht II with a better input system and full-360 facing.

Purchased and played Minecraft Dungeons. The game is fun enough for what it is, but it is VERY sparse, and the first run through of the game is maybe 10 hours? They try to stretch it out with game+, but there just isn't enough complexity to warrant hours of grinding. There are only 11 missions.

And really, the first 10 missions or so take maybe 4 hours including inventory and build management. The last mission ramps up the difficulty a lot which forces you to go back and grind old missions for better gear and levels before you can beat it, and that was the last 6 hours of playing for me.

You'd think that a game that has almost zero need for art design and such a simple game mechanic could have included more content...

It seems that the path forward in this game is going to be in player-created content?

jmotivator said:

Purchased and played Minecraft Dungeons. The game is fun enough for what it is, but it is VERY sparse, and the first run through of the game is maybe 10 hours? They try to stretch it out with game+, but there just isn't enough complexity to warrant hours of grinding. There are only 11 missions.

And really, the first 10 missions or so take maybe 4 hours including inventory and build management. The last mission ramps up the difficulty a lot which forces you to go back and grind old missions for better gear and levels before you can beat it, and that was the last 6 hours of playing for me.

You'd think that a game that has almost zero need for art design and such a simple game mechanic could have included more content...

It seems that the path forward in this game is going to be in player-created content?

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Did you find the secret cow level?

Redress said:

Did you find the secret cow level?

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... no. I guess I have a little more to do in the game. :lol:

My ADD in gaming continues apace, as I have moved on to playing Torchlight 3 now that it has been released.

It's come a long way since I last played, though I am guessing based on the experience, that the late game will be lacking, as it is in ... well, all ARPGs at launch.

I had fully expected to play the sharpshooter on release since that was the class I played the most in beta, but after about 15 levels with the Sharshooter she just felt lacking. She had been the most powerful class in beta, so I guess she might have been nerfed somewhere along the way.

I've moved on to Forged because it seemed like the most well rounded. It is actually rather strong and can be both a deadly ranged unit and a devastating melee class at the same time.

This is pretty important since all classes have 3 skill trees (though they aren't really trees since all skills are unlocked at preset character level rather than connected by interdependent skill branches). All classes have a ranged branch, a melee branch and a relic branch but for most classes you kind of need to choose melee or ranged since you will be equipping either a melee or a ranged weapon. the Forged has a standard weapon slot (1 hand and shield or 2 hand) but also has a belly gun slot that is ranged only. With a well equipped Forge class you can be devastating at all ranges.

That being said, most of the Relic skills are ranged or AOE skill, so a melee class can, in theory, be pretty good at all ranges, but not can really dual-specialize like Forge can.

It's a fun game that will ultimately be about 20-25 hours on first play through and probably not much to offer after that. I'll check back when I've completed the first play through.

I've played Torchlight 2 a bit. Always ran a melee guy with the bow as a secondary.
The thing that struck me was it seemed like a casual game up till level 20 or so, then it became challenging.

Grandpappy said:

I've played Torchlight 2 a bit. Always ran a melee guy with the bow as a secondary.
The thing that struck me was it seemed like a casual game up till level 20 or so, then it became challenging.

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It was game made for Theory Crafting, Min/Maxing degenerates... like me.

Torchlight 3, I can now report, is empty in the late game.

What is inexcusable with ARPGs is a lack of itemization. There are essentially a handful of unique items in the game... so few that you will probably get the same uniques to drop 4 to 5 times through your first play.

Made worse, they tried to artificially inflate the late game by taking Enchanting out of the game until late game. You will likely not get an enchanting table until after you win the game.

It was fun to play through, but I am done with it until they flesh the game out.

It's better that Diablo 3 end game and launch, I guess... but that aint saying much.

jmotivator said:

It's better that Diablo 3 end game and launch, I guess

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Harsh man. Oh so very harsh.

Redress said:

Harsh man. Oh so very harsh.

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You feel my frustration even through the typos.

This thread makes me want to go back and play Dungeon Siege again. Maybe 2 as well. Not 3. Nothing truly replaced DS for me until Torchlight 2 came out, and even then it was mostly for the QOL improvements (pets that sell loot was a big one.)