🚀 go-pugleaf

On Thu, 03 May 2001 13:48:26 +0200, Christoph Nahr
<see@reply-to.invalid> wrote:

>Heh.  Did you read the Gamespot review by Brett Todd?  Excerpts:

No, I generally just look at comments on usenet from people whose
tastes seem to be similar to mine before I buy games. Unfortunately I
couldn't find any comments about this game. All in all I'm still glad
I bought it though, it actually compares well to most the trash titles
that came out last year. I find myself continuing to play no despite
being hugely annoyed with the game much of the time. It's gotta have
something going for it.

>He also complains about the puzzle solving and the critical hits
>during combat.  

What's got me pissed now at about the mid point in the game is that
the weapons I have available to me cannot penetrate the armor of the
tougher critters I have to fight. The best damage weapon I have right
now is a stone battle axe made of obsidian. On a lucky role the big
loud guy can do 2 or 3 damage with it to an orc that compares "Equal".
Unfortunately, they regenerate so fast that that amount of damage
vanishes before he even attacks again. I can't figure out what the
hell they were thinking when they play balanced this game - some of
these fights are unavoidable because the quest calls for you to kill
an enemy.

The other thing that has hacked me off right from the start is the
magic system. I couldn't figure out why spells worked so well for
enemies but were totally useless for me until I saw what was happening
with the weapons. Most the damage spells have a base damage rating of
6, 7 or 8. The skimpiest leather armor has an armor rating of 7. Armor
values are being deducted from spell damage when the player casts
them, but not when the NPCs cast them. Since this makes spells a total
no-go as damage dealers for the player I can only assume that the
original intention was to have armor not apply to spell damage and
they made a last minute and ill-advised code change because somebody
thought spells made the game too easy.

Whatever the case, I just got a bitchin shell horn that casts a high
level Acid Fog spell. I immediately tried it out on some orcs I left
alive a few days ago that are now considered "Weaker" than me. Tada!
No damage. Bunch of 0's floating up the dcreeen for 10 seconds. I
didn't even do a single point of damage to them. 

The least they could have done is make magic equally useless for the
AI - but no, they have endless stamina and always hit for full damage
with spells. Somebody seriously needs to find a new line of work I
have never seen a computer game so poorly play balanced and I've been
playing them for 20 years now.

>Strangely enough, Brett still ended up liking Evil
>Islands and found it quite addictive, even though he had little good
>to say on any particular part of the game.

The game could have been something really special, they were on the
right track but took a lot of wrong turns. I'm hoping they do a sequel
that corrects the numerous problems with the combat engine, and go the
whole RPG route instead of doing a glorified adventure game. 

The last time I saw a game with so much wasted potential was
Cyberstorm I think. Probably this game willl share Cyberstorm's fate
:(