Does it get better?

[jahill007]

About 5 runs into this game and so far it's a pile of steaming poo. The starting heroes are boring with extremely limited deckbuilding and OP as hell enemies. It seems that as you unlock things you can craft your deck quite a bit more?

The previous runs giving gold and shards seems terrible, like you want to save up 3 failed runs to have a good one. So... 4-8 hours just to have a good run?

Maybe it's just a game for streamers and friends to fail at? Really thinking it's time to give up on it

[Corence]

It gets better. At higher madness levels (equivalent of ascension) you stop being able to use chests and instead get a base amount of currency, which is much better than the chest system. But yeah, it's rough at the start with how limited things are.

I'm sure someone is going to come in here and say how it's possible to beat the game without any upgrades if you're just good enough and you shouldn't complain, so be prepared for that.

[Tsuru]

If your relying on past gold and shards to win, you are gonna be disappointed when you get to the higher difficulty settings.

Perks, character rankings, and pure experience is where most of the characters real potential is.

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Just based on the limited infomation you've given, it seems like the genre overall isnt for you.

Roguelites arent meant to give you all the power at the start. You need to earn it through multiple play sessions. And through those multiple play sessions you will get the experience needed to figure out what works for each character and you will find you dont have to stick to a norm.

So if thats not what you are into. Thats fine. It doesnt have to be. I wish you luck in finding something else that is.

[HAWAIIANpikachu]

you don't need any chests to win, it's just a matter of getting good with pure experience. People have done many challenges/difficulties to win with harder than base difficulty.

I've beaten the game with scouts only, I've seen people beat the game with no healers. It's a rougelike, it's challenging, but you improve with each game.

[jahill007]

I love roguelites, but there's a point at which hiding everything behind meta progress is just forcing players to play a bad game until they can actually try to play the game as intended. Bad design. I find myself just hoping each run will be over since there's no hope of doing a damn thing. I've actually lost 1 run and just ended the rest of them if I get an unlocked character now.

From what I've seen so far, the game would be 10x better with more than just the starting 4 characters unlocked at the start. Negative review incoming.

[SamtheCossack]

My very first win was with a "Naked" run with no chests. I was planning on doing a run to stack up some currency for a progression run, but everything just clicked with the cards, and steamrolled all the way to the end pretty easily.

[HAWAIIANpikachu]

People have won the game with no meta progression either. Nothing but raw knowledge and whatever cards and equipment they find.

It's literally just knowledge and practice that you need.

[Kyro]

I advise you to play multiplayer via the game's discord server in the LFG (looking for a game channel). Let someone carry you through the game once and you'll be at rank 15. A second run will get you to 20-25.

Without ranks to level up your character's starting mana, this game is pretty agonizing and impossible to win early on with the default characters.

[Zeel Ara]

It sounds like it's just not your taste in game. Your inability to tell the difference between "bad game" and "game I don't enjoy" is a little worrying, but hopefully you're not very old.

[pi73r]

You don't need chests to win, they hardly matter tbh. While the game has it's disadvantages (early grind etc.) it ain't bad. Also unlocking some fun heroes doesn't take too long, then it gets interesting once you get your synergies off.

[NrSeven]

Originally posted by jahill007:

About 5 runs into this game and so far it's a pile of steaming poo. The starting heroes are boring with extremely limited deckbuilding and OP as hell enemies. It seems that as you unlock things you can craft your deck quite a bit more?

The previous runs giving gold and shards seems terrible, like you want to save up 3 failed runs to have a good one. So... 4-8 hours just to have a good run?

Maybe it's just a game for streamers and friends to fail at? Really thinking it's time to give up on it

Sounds like a skill issue...
Tons of people finished the game with base characters, without chests or anything.

Just because you aren't good at the game that it's a bad game...
Fix your mentality, stop blaming others for your own incompetence...

And of course there is a ton of meta progression. its a deck building rogue-LITE.

Honestly wondering if you aren't just farming jesters here.

[Calico-Jack]

Originally posted by jahill007:

About 5 runs into this game and so far it's a pile of steaming poo. The starting heroes are boring with extremely limited deckbuilding and OP as hell enemies. It seems that as you unlock things you can craft your deck quite a bit more?

The previous runs giving gold and shards seems terrible, like you want to save up 3 failed runs to have a good one. So... 4-8 hours just to have a good run?

Maybe it's just a game for streamers and friends to fail at? Really thinking it's time to give up on it

are you playing this in MP or SP? If you're not playing MP you're missing a chunk of the game experience - just start a MP game and people will join, thank fully the game attracts chill people.

There is also a book mechanic which are cards will let you discover more cards from a certain type of action during runs and the divinations which will get you rare drops

[Tsuru]

Originally posted by Ratley:

It sounds like it's just not your taste in game. Your inability to tell the difference between "bad game" and "game I don't enjoy" is a little worrying, but hopefully you're not very old.

He's probably not. I've noticed this with alot of the younger generation of gamers.

They typically want everything from the start so they can "beat it" and move on to something else. Their interests in game isn't about skill. It's just the feeling of getting it over with. So they can move on and get the "high" from another game or match.

If they don't understand the game it's automatically "bad game design"

But hey most of the time it's not their fault. They grew up playing games that cater to that generation. And they think that's the norm and anything else is terrible game.

[KocLobster]

Originally posted by jahill007:

About 5 runs into this game and so far it's a pile of steaming poo. The starting heroes are boring with extremely limited deckbuilding and OP as hell enemies. It seems that as you unlock things you can craft your deck quite a bit more?

The previous runs giving gold and shards seems terrible, like you want to save up 3 failed runs to have a good one. So... 4-8 hours just to have a good run?

Maybe it's just a game for streamers and friends to fail at? Really thinking it's time to give up on it

I felt EXACTLY like you when I first started playing. I only put 8 hours in before I came to the same decision. My guys/decks felt weak as all hell & enemies OP as hell.

Unlike most of these folks, I gave up on the game for now. Just wasn't fun enough, which really, really surprised me. I love these types of games.


EDIT: Okay after reading your 2nd post, maybe not EXACTLY like you, but close enough. I don't think the game has bad design. I just didn't expect it to be quite so hard up front, and I didn't have the patience to get better at the game.

[HAWAIIANpikachu]

Your guys start out a bit weaker due to not having perks, but people have beaten the game without perks so it's still possible then.

I'm going to have to disagree with the starting decks being weak as hell for the beginning characters. Andrin's and Evelyn's starting equipment are good (with Evelyn's item being just kinda niche because she already has 30% due to her innate) and Reginald having the best Innate trait via being able to maintain his own bless. (Although Andrin being able to maintain his own speed and typically always going first is amazing as well). The only one I would somewhat agree with is Magnus but Magnus can really get going when he reaches level 3 after some tuning.

[Corence]

I think it's less about the objective reality of the strength of the first run and more the subjective experience of new players. You start a run, the first thing that happens is you're brought into a town where you can't interact with anything since you have no money or crystals and there's a giant Town Upgrades thing showing all these nice metagame upgrades you can get. After you die you get perks and a chest which feels like a huge power spike that was time gated rather than skill gated. As you get more perks + starting money you can clear madness 0 with your brain off so it feels like the game rewarded the grind more than you getting better at it.

I don't really see a downside to removing chests from the game entirely and giving starting currency even on Madness 0. They just give the wrong impression and after you have metagame upgrades you can just sell supplies for the same effect if you want to do an OP run. There's still perks to give the satisfaction of leveling up each run.