How is the game? How does multiplayer work?

[Nox]

So this game popped up in my recomendations and got me interested. Would like to ask a few questions to see if it fits my style.

I'm gonna try and keep it short, no one wants to read a ton of useless text :P

- I really like Darkest Dungeon and Battle Brothers - is this game similiar?

- Is there big variety of enemies / dungeons / equipment?

- How does the relationships between characters works? Does it evolve? Does it infulence the gameplay a lot?

- How does multiplayer work? Is it shared progress where one of the players is the host and every other player creates their own heroes? (like in For The King to be preciese) Or is it simply joining to lobby and helping a host with no influence on the game?

- How big is the replayability?

Thanks in advance!

[Andi]

I don't know Battle Brothers, so I can't compare that.
Darkest Dungeon is kinda a bit similar-ish, because both tell a (more or less tragic) story of heroes. Gameplay however is quite different. Wildermyth is a turn-based strategy game, where you move units around a grid-based battle-board. And yet, I've found both games very enjoyable.

The enemies are grouped by race, each having several different units that fulfill different roles. I would have to count, but I guess in total it's probably about 50 different enemy types?
Dungeons are not really a thing in Wildermyth. Your heroes explore an overworld map, where each tile has a certain chance to have one or sometimes two battles. There are plenty of different battle boards though, so many that I'm not even sure they aren't procedural.
Equipment is also different from what you might expect. Yes, every hero has slots to put equipment in, but apart from weapon and armor, which you can craft, those are basically random drops, usually one item per battle. And while there are a lot of those random drop items, they mostly differ visually, while their effects are repetitive. +x points health, +y points magic damage, etc. Items cannot be moved once they are assigned to a slot, only replaced by a newer item.

Relationships between characters do indeed evolve. Campaigns in Wildermyth have chapters, between which you usually have extended periods of peace. While during a chapter relationships are only slightly changing (because not too much time is passing - you'll have characters fall in love, but usually not marry during campaigns), over those years of peace characters will get better friends, form families, have children, etc.
Those children will also come to join your party sometimes.
And yes, relationships have very important gameplay effects. Lover's vengeance is a really powerful buff for instance, that gives one of your heroes a lot of bonus damage if their partner gets hurt. Similarly, if heroes are rivals, they can get a drastically increased crit chance.
Edit: Apart from that there are also several relationship-based story-events that can happen before a battle, or after scouting a map tile.

I haven't played multiplayer yet, but from the in-game description it's cooperative, with each player getting either full control over all units, or just a dedicated list of units which are then "theirs". Apart from that it seems to be very much like single-player.

The replayability is great. The overland map is procedural, so no two play-throughs of a campaign will ever be the same. Also, some of your heroes will be added to your "legacy", meaning you can re-use them in future campaigns and they bring some of their experience over. That's imho a great incentive to keep playing, even if you only have the procedural campaigns left.
In addition, the game comes with an integrated event- and campaign-editor. I'd have to check how many campaigns have already been uploaded to the Steam Workshop, but I'm expecting to see a lot, sooner or later.

[frowningmirror]

- I really like Darkest Dungeon and Battle Brothers - is this game similiar?

It's closer to Battle Brothers in that those are isometric tactical rpgs. This game is more simple and not difficult. It has a roleplaying focus and more light hearted than the other two. Edit: well aside from how extremely easy it is to lose limbs in this world.

- Is there big variety of enemies / dungeons / equipment?

The enemies are have decent variety, you fight them in 5 flavors of factions. The dungeons aren't anything special, there is few environmental terrain. The weapons are mostly mechanically bland but there are many of them.

- How does the relationships between characters works? Does it evolve? Does it infulence the gameplay a lot?

There are three different relationships, Romance, Friendship and Rivalry. These can be gained artificially through random events or more "naturally" by traveling with your companions (the relationship will be based on their personality type in this case). Events and dialogue are a big focus of the game, the dialogue often changes based on your relationship and some events are triggered by your relationship type.

- How does multiplayer work? Is it shared progress where one of the players is the host and every other player creates their own heroes? (like in For The King to be preciese) Or is it simply joining to lobby and helping a host with no influence on the game?

It is closer to For The King. The game and save file is stored on the hosts local computer, beyond that, everyone is equally part of the story as long as they are at the scene. Who controls what character is manually done.

- How big is the replayability?

Extremely high. The entire game is very much procedural, and randomly generated by number. The player has only a little influence on the development of the character, rather pure chance, making the characters often unique from each other. The changes are often permanent, carrying through campaigns and can be pretty wild, from body parts turning into flames to frog heads to just neat tid-bits about your history. In addition, the game has a legacy system. To become a "mythwalker" which is basically a mostly completed character, you'll have to play multiple decent sized campaigns, which in turn will make other worthwhile characters and memories. This game was also clearly intended to have the community add events and mod the game, so there is plenty of content to experiment with

[Nox]

Okay thank you! Will keep an eye on this game and will buy it once it goes on sale.

[Salan]

They didn't really answer the multiplayer part well tho.

Host starts a game. Some games have legacy characters some have non legacy characters.

Lets say you start a 5 chapter non legacy with 5 players, and 4 friends join.
You can assign each character slot to a single player.
As they create their characters there are some minor bugs with menu's, if someone is accessing the same menu's on their character it bugs a bit. Usually we find 1 person accessing each section at a time works flawlessly.
You then finalize your characters and start the game.... when that game ends each player can save all played characters to their legacy if they are new characters, and can promote 2 characters to a higher legacy level.

lets say you play again, and play legacy characters.
Each player connected to the host can load any legacy character in their legacy into the game.
I have level 5 legacy characters, my son has level 3s and my friend has level 5s. We can load any of any of our legacy characters into the game, and THEN assign them to anyone we want, as per a boardgame kinda.
at the end of that game, any characters we have not played with previously will be savable at level 1 in our legacy files. any characters we have played with previously are potentially promotable if the promotion leaves them at a higher level then they are in our legacy. (for instance my son loaded a character at level 3, that i had on my hard drive at level 4.. i can't promote him, although my son could).

so all in all its a great system.

You can also join games already in progress. Join the host and just drop into the game, and be assigned any character currently being played.

atm there is a bit of issue for quitting multiplayer games, but they said they are working on that part.

[Djobi]

Originally posted by Salan:

They didn't really answer the multiplayer part well tho.

Host starts a game. Some games have legacy characters some have non legacy characters.

Lets say you start a 5 chapter non legacy with 5 players, and 4 friends join.
You can assign each character slot to a single player.
As they create their characters there are some minor bugs with menu's, if someone is accessing the same menu's on their character it bugs a bit. Usually we find 1 person accessing each section at a time works flawlessly.
You then finalize your characters and start the game.... when that game ends each player can save all played characters to their legacy if they are new characters, and can promote 2 characters to a higher legacy level.

lets say you play again, and play legacy characters.
Each player connected to the host can load any legacy character in their legacy into the game.
I have level 5 legacy characters, my son has level 3s and my friend has level 5s. We can load any of any of our legacy characters into the game, and THEN assign them to anyone we want, as per a boardgame kinda.
at the end of that game, any characters we have not played with previously will be savable at level 1 in our legacy files. any characters we have played with previously are potentially promotable if the promotion leaves them at a higher level then they are in our legacy. (for instance my son loaded a character at level 3, that i had on my hard drive at level 4.. i can't promote him, although my son could).

so all in all its a great system.

You can also join games already in progress. Join the host and just drop into the game, and be assigned any character currently being played.

atm there is a bit of issue for quitting multiplayer games, but they said they are working on that part.

Really helpful answer thanks