/vr/ - Retro Games

[Anonymous No.2464963]

Ever played a game that felt too hard and too easy at the same time?

Pic related, talking about Deathkings of the Dark Citadel. I just played it again and it's a lot more frustrating than I remembered. The puzzles are more straightforward than the base game but they really went all out with the enemies. Basically every level has tons of Slaughtaurs and Afrits combined with unfriendly architecture. If there's some small pool of water you can bet there are going to be at least three Stalkers in there. It gets to the point where there's hardly a reason to ever stop firing the wand in water, because your path gets blocked by a stalker every other step and the other weapons are too slow and cost mana.

All that wouldn't be so bad if it wasn't for the "respawns". In the base game basically only Ettins respawn which every class can easily kill without using mana. But in Deathkings every level has dangerous enemies like Slaughtaurs spawning at the usual interval, every four minutes. Of course ammo and health don't respawn so you're essentially looking at a time limit, you can't fuck around for too long or you'll eventually waste too much mana and health on killing the respawns. It also makes looking around in the levels really annoying because there's always going to be some asshole shooting at fireballs at you while you look at the map. The mage has it easier with this than the other two because the wand is the best first weapon, you could basically play the whole game with it because it does decent damage, has very fast projectile speed, pierces, doesn't get reflected, and doesn't cost mana. On the other hand the other three weapons the mage has feel less than potent.

Even with all this shit my inventory was loaded with items. 25 quartz flasks, 6 icons, like 8 maulotaurs, etc. at the moment I killed the last bosses. Still it felt like the game was pissing me off, throwing annoying enemies everywhere constantly and making me feel like I'm wasting my ammo and health.

[Anonymous No.2465047]

>>2464963
>Ever played a game that felt too hard and too easy at the same time?
No

[Anonymous No.2465059]

>>2464963
Alundra comes to mind.

Its not hard by any stretch (its basically a Zelda clone with more options), but the ludicrously precise puzzle execution makes it feel insanely difficult. Early on your weapons are weak as shit which turns boss battles into endurance marathons.

I seriously considered giving up at points because of the puzzle difficulty, but at the end of the game you just like 3 shot the boss with magic, and you can lock previous bosses into patterns using their weakness. Its really really strange.

[Anonymous No.2465680]

>>2464963
>the wand is the best first weapon, you could basically play the whole game with it because it does decent damage,
You gotta be 'avin a giraffe. The wand is terrible. The only good first weapon is the fighter's fist.

Y'know, unless Deathkings rebalances the gameplay. I've barely played it but from what I did play it was just vanilla Hexen with new levels.

[Anonymous No.2465796]

>>2464963
Might & Magic games do this.

[Anonymous No.2465856]

>>2464963
I'm playing this at the moment!

loved original Hexen, after coming back to it years later (it was far too hard for an 8 year old back in the day).

managed to complete the original (with plenty of walkthrough help) now attempting the expansion.

btw I just finished a Hexen map, which runs in zdoom:
http://www.mediafire.com/download/ucwcc8nzcy9yg8t/Dregmere_Dam.wad

[Anonymous No.2465931]

It was mostly tedious, slaughtaurs are the worst enemies in the game and they put them everywhere. You just run around like crazy and whack stuff till the room is cleared.

I highly recommend the Necrosis mod for a challenge with more variation to it.

[Anonymous No.2466047]

>>2465931
>Necrosis mod
this is awesome, thanks for the rec

dat air texture