wow, that was unexpected :O

*thumbs up*

Nice - I had my eyes on this one on Steam already, but hoped for GOG :)

I'm still on the fence about this one; on one hand it piqued my interest ever since it was announced about a year and a half ago and I've been following the development process with great interest - plus I LOVE the Mike Mignola inspired art style. On the other hand, I've read several opinions which say that the game has become rather simplified as far as the RPG elements go and as such is more of a "style over substance" kind of game - which would also be alright with me, since this time the style really appeals to me, but I'm still not sure if I'd want to spend ~20.- EUR on something like that.

Unfortunately the replay value is not very high. The game is very atmospheric and all, but the gameplay simply isn't very deep, and there's a lot of grinding involved. Grinding isn't necessarily terrible, however, but in the case of this game the dungeons are quite repetitive. Once you've seen a dungeon at level 1, and again at level 3, you're pretty much seen all it has to offer. There's five total dungeons, and their individual layouts are very similar and their mission conditions are generally quite similar too. Combat tends to get pretty samey after a while, and it can get downright boring if you stall the fights to make sure everyone's at max health and stress before moving on. There is some stall detection and a stalling penalty, but even so it's an extremely effective (albeit tedious) strategy. Even though it has stall penalties, the game encourages stalling, because characters can't use their abilities outside of combat and healing is universally weak. The game economy practically requires excessive grinding because of how expensive everything is. The "ideal strategy" is to send a group of level 0 heroes into a level 1 dungeon with no supplies whatsoever, then call them back to town when they've got some loot and dismiss them. Repeat ad nauseam.

There are also a number of design decisions that are questionable. The stress bar is ultimately just a second health bar, and while it's interesting at first it eventually replaces the actual health bar as the "true" health bar, because it doesn't reset to full when the mission is over. Higher-level heroes will flatly refuse to enter a lower-level dungeon, even if they aren't nearly powerful enough to handle an on-level dungeon. This often means that a group that has spent time clearing a path toward a dungeon's boss will not be able to actually fight that boss because it's "beneath them." With a limited roster size, you can also get into a situation where you have three level 1-2 characters and they simply can't advance because nobody is willing to do a dungeon with them... and if they tag along to a higher-level dungeon they aren't prepared for, they'll probably end up afflicted or dead. So you have to wait until a higher-level hero dies in order to advance them. Additionally, each individual hero can only complete the final dungeon once. Afterwards, they'll once again refuse to enter the dungeon at all. This severely limits the player's ability to experience and enjoy the endgame.

All that said, it's a fun game, and a lot of the game's issues are addressable through modding (which is pretty easy), but ultimately there's not a whole lot of meat on the bones. Don't expect this to be one of those infinitely-replayable roguelikes. But it's good for a few hours at least.

i got it.

No shame to that. I'm also a "Normal or even easy, because I want to finish that game eventually" player. ^^

Strangely, though, after I passed the first "rough" contact, I eventually enjoyed this game. Didn't play long because it lacked content and was getting repetitive, though (the joys of early access incomplete games), and because of a vicious difficulty spike, but maybe it changed. Now it's fully released, I'll try again and see if the mid/end game has been smoothed and beefed up :)

You can turn the data collection off in the options, fortunately.

Simply put - each to their own.
Don't forget, they want to put in the merchant and town events post release.
There's plenty of replay value, as well as plenty of repetitive elements.
Overall, I love the game, and that's 'my own'.

You do realise that GOG, or Steam have very little to say about prices? Game dev sets price, and both sellers have some % from the value. Some games might have a special treatment, but most of the time price is dictated by developer/publisher.

It would be foolish of GOG to stop the release of a game, just because there is optional 'data collection'.

Oh. In that case, I'll probably wait a little bit before I try the game again, to have the complete experience, since it's unlikely I'll play it over and over again. Thanks for the head's up :)

oh god yes yes yes ! i confess i was finally weak mid november last year for this game... i was really appealed to it but it was early access, so it xas steam and i sincerely doubted it or rather didnt even consider it would hit gog any day soon...

so already got it but hell yeah i will get it on gog right now... it's a great game for masochistic persons who like to be punished hard by buttspanking god of rng :)

although, a lore mistake in gog news post up there: the plague doctor is a lass, so it's a "she", mind you :) but in the dark, she'll scream and loose her sanity all the same...

Thank you. Useful details.

Was there a big kerfuffle about Renowned Explorers and its Metrics collection option? That was on by default... a simple click turned it off. Such hard work.

could the people playing (and loving) this game help me decide please?

first, I love the style, the setting and the lore
but I'm not a big fan of roguelikes... I do play them from time to time, but their lack of "end" or some progress unappealing

so my question is - does this game have a progress and an end? or do you just keep going into dungeons over and over and replace your dead characters with new ones over and over until the end of time?

simply put, is there a decent campaign?

thank you all! I'm having a strong urge to just instabuy this game solely on how it looks, but I decided not to for now because of the genre it seems to fall into...