How Much Contents?

[Toki]

Any idea how many hours of content there will be?
Will there be lots of unlockables?

[bullfighter]

and DLCs?

[Darkness]

So far into Act 2 (5 hours in), I can tell you there're 4 unlockable characters, and the 6 characters play very differently, but good enough for me to want to play them all.

There's a good light permanent progression, where you can spend money at the forge and book of rea to unlock cumulative passive bonuses for everyone at once. You unlock the nodes individually, tied to story chapters (forge) or events (book).

There're also random events on stages that can grant temporary buffs, and at least one that can affect the family (so far, not really relevant, just funny, hoping it'll eventually become a combat pet, but unlikely I guess).

Also each character has its own level and skill trees, and spending point on their skills can provide passive bonuses to all characters.

Since it took me 5 hours to get not even in the middle of Act 2, and I suspect it has 3 acts, I'd say it'll give me at least more 10 to 15 hours. Hopefully it'll have more stuff I'm not expecting!

I don't know the potential of "new game +" or something unlikely to keep me "hooked" after finishing the story. So far, the story is amazing, very uniquely told by a narrator, and very emotional. Really really good stuff.

Mind you the amount of hours taken on each stage and act will vary greatly from each person skills, as dying will make you go to the beggining of the stage. You can also try to rush in the stages, though you'll end up having lower level, less gold for permanent upgrades, and less random events found, so I don't suggest it unless you're into "speed running" or trying to go quickly to unlock all playable characters for some reason.

[Darkness]

Ok, it has 3 acts, and took me 11 hours to finish. No new game plus, but at least the game didn't delete my save after finishing the campaign (I was afraid it'd do that, after the demo did it).

I can still play the cleared stages freely, though the stages don't scale to character level, so it's only a little challenging on the late one. I can keep farming gold/xp on my characters if I desire, and still find some "events" I didn't find on my playthrough by visiting earlier stages. Heck, there're even some items I still didn't find.

I'd say the amount of time to finish it is between 6 hours (maybe a great player that doesn't fail any stages, don't explore 100% of stages, and maybe skip most dialogs) and 20 hours (casual player struggling to finish stages and failing a lot, being carried by permanent progression through farming).

Currently it doesn't offer a solid replayability at all, but the narrative is very good, and I found the ending good as well. I'd probably start over the campaign if it had new game plus, and or maybe if I had a co-op partner for 10+ hours haha... though I can't confirm if the release version won't feature anything extra compared to my build.

[Toki]

Originally posted by Darkness:

Ok, it has 3 acts, and took me 11 hours to finish. No new game plus, but at least the game didn't delete my save after finishing the campaign (I was afraid it'd do that, after the demo did it).

I can still play the cleared stages freely, though the stages don't scale to character level, so it's only a little challenging on the late one. I can keep farming gold/xp on my characters if I desire, and still find some "events" I didn't find on my playthrough by visiting earlier stages. Heck, there're even some items I still didn't find.

I'd say the amount of time to finish it is between 6 hours (maybe a great player that doesn't fail any stages, don't explore 100% of stages, and maybe skip most dialogs) and 20 hours (casual player struggling to finish stages and failing a lot, being carried by permanent progression through farming).

Currently it doesn't offer a solid replayability at all, but the narrative is very good, and I found the ending good as well. I'd probably start over the campaign if it had new game plus, and or maybe if I had a co-op partner for 10+ hours haha... though I can't confirm if the release version won't feature anything extra compared to my build.

I hope one day a rogue-lite comes out with as much interesting replayability as Binding of Isaac.

[Darkness]

There're plenty interesting roguelites with lots of replayability.

The point is that this game is not really a roguelite. It doesn't resolve around being finished on a run in about 1 hour, and certainly doesn't feature loops.

It has permadeath, it has procedural dungeons, and some random items of different types to be found, yes, but it plays each dungeon alone. All in all, it has about 10 dungeons or so, and each of them takes about 30 minutes or a little more to be 100% completed.

So, it's a non-roguelite game, with mini roguelite-ish dungeons. The strongest part of the game is certainly its narrative and how its told.

Stuff you unlock the more you play:
- new characters (usually 1 each stage finished, but sometimes failing stages can unlock too)
- shrines (at first they're locked, then you unlock them on your runs, give some random temporary buffs)
- runes (random interesting items that has charges and eventually runs out, and modify your attack and active skills individually with nice effects)

In a roguelite sense, those are the unlockables, but you don't unlock shrines and runes individually, you unlock their "class" so that you can find them on future "runs".

[Terranigma23]

Originally posted by Darkness:

There're plenty interesting roguelites with lots of replayability.

The point is that this game is not really a roguelite. It doesn't resolve around being finished on a run in about 1 hour, and certainly doesn't feature loops.

It has permadeath, it has procedural dungeons, and some random items of different types to be found, yes, but it plays each dungeon alone. All in all, it has about 10 dungeons or so, and each of them takes about 30 minutes or a little more to be 100% completed.

So, it's a non-roguelite game, with mini roguelite-ish dungeons. The strongest part of the game is certainly its narrative and how its told.

Stuff you unlock the more you play:
- new characters (usually 1 each stage finished, but sometimes failing stages can unlock too)
- shrines (at first they're locked, then you unlock them on your runs, give some random temporary buffs)
- runes (random interesting items that has charges and eventually runs out, and modify your attack and active skills individually with nice effects)

In a roguelite sense, those are the unlockables, but you don't unlock shrines and runes individually, you unlock their "class" so that you can find them on future "runs".

I'm not a fan of rogue lite with pre based map, because the story in theses games are often not really good. How is the story of this game ?

[tcpl]

Originally posted by Darkness:

Ok, it has 3 acts, and took me 11 hours to finish. No new game plus, but at least the game didn't delete my save after finishing the campaign (I was afraid it'd do that, after the demo did it).

I can still play the cleared stages freely, though the stages don't scale to character level, so it's only a little challenging on the late one. I can keep farming gold/xp on my characters if I desire, and still find some "events" I didn't find on my playthrough by visiting earlier stages. Heck, there're even some items I still didn't find.

I'd say the amount of time to finish it is between 6 hours (maybe a great player that doesn't fail any stages, don't explore 100% of stages, and maybe skip most dialogs) and 20 hours (casual player struggling to finish stages and failing a lot, being carried by permanent progression through farming).

Currently it doesn't offer a solid replayability at all, but the narrative is very good, and I found the ending good as well. I'd probably start over the campaign if it had new game plus, and or maybe if I had a co-op partner for 10+ hours haha... though I can't confirm if the release version won't feature anything extra compared to my build.

If you stick with a single hero in your playthrough, won't the heroes you unlocked be level 1?

[Darkness]

Originally posted by tristan_sonic:

I'm not a fan of rogue lite with pre based map, because the story in theses games are often not really good. How is the story of this game ?

The story itself is not that mindblown, but it has some nice surprises, but is very linear. The best part is how it's told, it has a great narrator, with a very rich narration. It feels very emotional. The game tries to be about "family", and honestly, it actually manages itself to do that as fine as possible.

Originally posted by Gunner:

If you stick with a single hero in your playthrough, won't the heroes you unlocked be level 1?

Yeah, character leveling is separate, but there're two points to consider.

The first is that the game has a "corruption" mechanic that reduces the life of your characters the more you play it, so you might need to change characters to make the previous character "rest" and get rid of the buff. I don't know still exactly what triggers it, but it happens often and can reduce your maximum life a lot.

Secondly, the further you get, the more XP you get, so if you take a level 1 character on a further stage, you get a nice level really quickly. The level just affect the active skill tree and family passives, but not health/damage AFAIK, those are affected by upgrading on gold spent, so it's fine to play lower level characters on late stages.

Anyway, I really recommend playing all of them to unlock family passives that benefit all of them.

[tcpl]

Originally posted by Darkness:

Yeah, character leveling is separate, but there're two points to consider.

The first is that the game has a "corruption" mechanic that reduces the life of your characters the more you play it, so you might need to change characters to make the previous character "rest" and get rid of the buff. I don't know still exactly what triggers it, but it happens often and can reduce your maximum life a lot.

Secondly, the further you get, the more XP you get, so if you take a level 1 character on a further stage, you get a nice level really quickly. The level just affect the active skill tree and family passives, but not health/damage AFAIK, those are affected by upgrading on gold spent, so it's fine to play lower level characters on late stages.

Anyway, I really recommend playing all of them to unlock family passives that benefit all of them.

Well, then I really see no way of getting replay value out this game, which is unfortunate as its marketed as an ARPG / roguelite. Very disappointing.

[Darkness]

Originally posted by Gunner:

Well, then I really see no way of getting replay value out this game, which is unfortunate as its marketed as an ARPG / roguelite. Very disappointing.

Not all ARPGs need that much replayability as diablo-likes, mind you, but indeed it's lacking a little on this department, could be much better.

On the permanent progression side, you need to farm lots of gold to unlock all upgrades, which affect all characters at once. There're a few passive nodes to boost character abilities (like damage, health, crit chance, and so on), and other that boost other indirect stuff (rune duration, xp find).

Anyway, the gameplay is solid enough to keep me playing even after I finished the game, but if it had new game +, or if the dungeons scaled with your character level at will, or even if it had a separate dungeon with random bosses and stuff, it'd be much better.

Story-wise, there's also no point in replaying, as basically it seems you have no choice at all on what unfolds.

So it's probably a game you'll play between 10 and 20 hours, and not much more than that, as it is - that is, unless it gets some additional content on launch or after, and I'm betting it will.

[FattyMooMooMan]

To be honest most ARPGs have a decent re-playability factor and many have good co-op too making their lifespan prettty long (I believe this does have the co-op side but next to no replayability worth talking about), to me it sounds like this game is sorely lacking in this department so its time to remove it from my wishlist, shame as the demo was ok too (story was good, though the gameplay not as fun as it could be).