Is the game really balanced?

[GreenOne]

Played it with a friend for quite a bit yesterday/today, from my expeirence I can tell the following.

Stress:
The stress meter is probably even more important than HP, and the abilites that can reduce it are pitiful, that Jester with lute is probably the best way to reduce stress, Banner Knight kind of does it too, but that's 3-4 points. And then some pig vomits at you and you get like 20, and any critical hit can make it 20 per character, so is it even worth spending turn reducing stress instead killing the pigs. Eventually stress gets out of control to the point where characters go mad and do things that harm themselves, screw your tactic or make other characters even more stressed, which can chain-react.
Not to mention lights going out in no time and traps that also add to stress.

Characters:
By the end of a dungeon you have a bunch of freaks, to recover them you have to pay quite a good coin, but that's only stress and not these negative quirks they get a lot too. At that point I don't get it wether it's worth recovering the characters paying insane amounts of gold and waiting or hiring newbies. So characters don't get to develop much due to quirks negating a lot of the level up benefits. Is there point in level up system? And it seems that now you kind of have slowly grind sending the veterans occasionally while hiring newbies for a single run to either mostly die or go insane but bring goods for your main party and city, after that you dismiss the poor guys and grab another bunch. Seems kind of wrong.

Interactive props:
It seems that only some, very few, can give you good stuf. Is there really no point touching stuff like rotting corpses, blades stuck into boards, headstones and such? It looks like they only add different diseases and other bad effects and never reward, don't think it's fun if there is no point touching them.

GUI:
Could be better, some more important information like damage for weapons could be shown near the icons. Ability parameter descriptions could be overhauled too, maybe replace some letters (ACC) with icons & add description to them. And overall descriptions look like a mess, such things as damage modifiers add confuse, it's easier just to hover attack over an enemy to see possible outcome, but doing so manually for each enemy & ability is not right. On the other hand, just firing random spells and clicking random attacks isn't fun either, I wish it was addressed somehow.


Conclusion:
Apologies for the wall of text, but can anyone confirm or correct the statements above? At first I thought I'd buy the game when I get back home, but after we played for a bit I have strong doubts now. Like the concept, but mechanics seem to flawed, not too good GUI, a bit too much Randomness, Stress is impossible to handle, Character leveling doesn't seem profitable, too much grinding overall. For now will wait and see if I really want to buy the game. Thanks for reading!

[i'm sorry]

Αναρτήθηκε αρχικά από GreenFlame:

Another question, I remember characters getting stressed just when the party advances forward with 90+ torch. Seems to happen for no apparent reason, any explaination?

Higher light levels just reduces the ammount of stress the get.

[GreenOne]

I think maybe some of them had claustraphobia and that was the reason. Maybe =)

[Aedwynn]

Αναρτήθηκε αρχικά από bustedradio:

Αναρτήθηκε αρχικά από GreenFlame:

Another question, I remember characters getting stressed just when the party advances forward with 90+ torch. Seems to happen for no apparent reason, any explaination?

Higher light levels just reduces the ammount of stress the get.

I think it's just to represent the mounting tension of the expedition. I mean - you're in hostile terrtory and every shadow could be containing immortal cosmic horrors - when there's been no combat for a while your adventurers are probably wondering why it's too easy - are they walking into a trap? Etc.

The thing that irks me from a Gameplay\Story perpective is that your adventurers can't use their healing skills outside of combat. Now, don't get me wrong - I get the reason why; it's about balancing. There's no 'mana' stat or whatever so there *must* be a restriction to this sort of thing to prevent the game being too easy. But, 'in universe' what's going on?

"Jester - play us a song to sooth our worries."
"Can't lads, sorry."
"Why not? Is your lute damaged?"
"Nah, I can only really find inspiration for a nice, relaxing tune when some Eldritch horror is pulling my guts out."

[ben]

No one use the Helion shout? Just spam that and you can keep the front 2 ranks stunned most of the time and just pour fire on the back two. Debuff is irrelevant because all the Helion does is shout shout shout.

[Aedwynn]

Αναρτήθηκε αρχικά από ben:

No one use the Helion shout? Just spam that and you can keep the front 2 ranks stunned most of the time and just pour fire on the back two. Debuff is irrelevant because all the Helion does is shout shout shout.

Yes. This skill is amazing. (Barbarian YAWP!)