I felt the same effect, by the end of chapter 2 I had died 4 times and seemed I was going to be forced into iAP. I also played the beta and the difficulty was definitely ramped up. (You are talking about the private beta, right?)
I have to say that I really, really want to like this game. Due to the forementioned progressing/stop bug I noted above, I deleted and reinstalled. I just can't understand the controls enough to get good at it. Look at a game like Lili/Horn which had a somewhat newer type of control scheme, and comparatively speaking, They felt very natural to pick up whereas this one, I can't even get the dodging correctly yet. I also think the game devs have the right to implement whatever they want, including control scheme, as it is their game after all. I really hope they may try a different control scheme, but it reminds me of Crazy Hedgy where everyone wanted touch controls, and the devs never budged, and CH still gets mass praises for its controls. I'm not giving up on this game yet either, just a little frustrated that I, personally, am not good enough to get them to jive for me. It sure seems like it could be fun, but it also seems to be a little repetitive that every where you turn, it's just combat with not much variety. I am almost half way through the game now. Would I reccomend it? Yes. Edit to add: the game is also IAP hungry where a lot of the super skills are not permanent upgrades, but consumables. Yes, most games do this, but I don't believe to such an extent as this one.
Yup, they've gone to town with their IAP push. In short I liked combat, I actually liked controls, thought graphics were nice but not a revelation, feel IAP model implemented is highly dodgy and not impressed. Would be 4 or 5 without the current IAP model used, possibly only a 2 or 3 if it gets as irritating as it looks as things progress. But I'll invest a bit more time and see how that pans out.
I'm not sure why but DoF was off by default in the options, turned it on and it makes those combat sequences very pretty. Especially when there's fire in the background. Side stepped the health costs as suggested by others earlier with Second Wind, almost makes things too easy to be honest, a symptom of IAP dependant focus rather than purely gameplay. Still think its rude but stops that spend more than you earn you get with fights. Before I jump the gun, is it possible to acquire more Stones from replaying chapters or is there a finite amount? Just wondering if its possible to buy everything in one play through without resorting to IAP?
I swear I read almost every post right from the beginning of this thread before making that comment, but got impatient in the last page so I went ahead and asked the question without reading Wikilix's post
Yes, the private beta via Testflight. PS: It is sad that the two most common themes during the private Beta - IAPs and controls - were promised to be addressed by the developers, but ultimately they pulled a fast one on us.
You got it right on the money there. Many modern mobile games are plagued with this. How I wish to play another Shadowgun-esque action game, where there are three distinct difficulty levels to choose from, and no IAPs present to even plant the idea of unbalanced gameplay in your mind. The hallmark of a IAP-dependant game as you say is that it can be too easy or too difficult irrespective of your playing skills. Balance, balance, balance... I think the only reason I bought this was because of the fact I have waited for over 12 months for the game, and on the promise of the devs to make IAPs less prominent. Lesson learnt I guess. 1) Don't trust devs and 2) Don't buy IAP-plagued action games (unless the general consensus is that it's fair)
We've picked up that a lot of people have not made the jump to punching the bosses to kill them and are working on a solution for our first update. A hazard of playing the game ourselves for so long is that we start to take certain things as a given Another area we realize we need better player education is on the finer points of combat (this isn't a random slasher, there is a lot of depth and MungeParty worked hard at getting tons of really long, complex combo chains in there). The training dummy suggestion is a good one that we've been discussing. It's doubtful it'll make it into our first update, but maybe further down the line. I'm curious, have any of you found any combos that you find particularly powerful o enjoyable? Hi cabdog, I assure you, we went through multiple rounds of testing, including the month or so of soft launch in Canada which exposed the game to thousands of players. We also definitely didn't rush, we've been working on Bladeslinger Episode 1 for the better part of 2 years now (just ask my gamedev-widow wife ), and been very nitpicky about quality and polish. Unfortunately, on a production of this scale some bugs are bound to slip through no matter how much testing you do, especially with such a small team. With that said, we would be extremely grateful if you would send us your save game using the feedback button in the Main Menu or Settings menu that looks like an envelope. Also, please include in that mail any specifics about how you got into that bind-did you die before the town gates? Did you perhaps go into the small hut before the bridge? Anything you can think of, really. Thanks [edit] I see from your later post that you reinstalled, so that save is gone We'd still appreciate any repro information. [/edit]
Game is fun, but room for improvement Finished Normal and Sick modes without spending any IAP (currently midway through Plagued). I can see why some folks may find it quite difficult to progress without IAP, and can view it as a money trap. Personally I'd never spend a penny of IAP in any game as a matter of principal. Generally to avoid IAP one just have to do some grinding, and the dev for this game is kind enough to give us Chap 1 for this purpose. You can easily finish Chap 1 in 4-5 mins, and get about 2K gold and 3-5 spirit pieces each time, while perfecting your mastery of the control and different combos in the process. A couple of hrs grinding can get you enough gold/spirit to max out the key stats like Brute Force/Health/Spirit. Be sure to get unlimited supply of Second Wind like others have suggested. It save you from buying health potion afterwards. I have to say once I get a hang of it, the game becomes pretty fun. Even with maxed out character, the battle in Sick and Plague mode are pretty intense and long, which is wickedly fun. One thing that needs some tweaking is Chap 5 (Killing Time) time limit. I find the limit almost impossible without the help of Snake or Viper oil in Sick mode, which shouldn't be the case. Beyond bug fixes (still too many crashes) and balance tweaks, I'd like to see more enemy styles and bigger worlds (right now it's just two, the town and the mine). More combo chains would be nice too (e.g., left/right/up/down, etc). Last but not least, iCloud Save.
Valid points in your posts! But the fact that you have to grind for hours to complete a short game is what people are unhappy about. This is the part which 'encourages' you to purchase IAPs and needlessly prolongs the game at the expense of balance and pacing. I will try out some of your suggestions later on!...perhaps in a week or 2 when my Exams are over. :<
I just couldnot proceed with playing this anymore. You can Deffienetly see that Iap is a big part of this game and its just not my cup of tea. And what bothers me is this game looks amazing and is deff one if the best looking games out there. I just pray that they consider traditional control schemes in a future update.
Got the hang of it now and starting to really enjoy it! Now blocking, attacking (and finishing the monsters off with a punch) makes sense it's pretty cool! Definitely think the tutorial could be a bit better but looking at all the special attacks and tons of stuff to play with I can see this being a game I'll play a lot. Oh, I haven't spent any cash on IAP btw. Bought the 6 stone infinite health regenerator but once you can fight you don't need to use it much or keep buying health potions. My advice - stick with it!
Hear, hear. We over here at TA at least have a community to fall back on, and are vastly experience mobile gamers compared to the rest out there. We can get tips from others on where to grind, and the fact that grinding is even a possibility. But what about the millions of other souls out there? Are they not at the mercy of the devs? After finding themselves unable to progress anymore due to the lack of funds to get health potions (before getting the permanent potion is possible), what do you think they'd do? Turn to IAPs of course...
I think if you can hold off buying any potions (or minimum spending of money) until you get the permanent health re generator, you'd be pretty much safe, am I right? Just to confirm, how many different enemies are there? Just the same ones? If so, that is mighty disappointing. Also I can't seem to find much info on combos, so yeah devs should really highlight that. PS: Any info (price, ETA) on EP2 would be welcome.
Second Wind pretty much makes it a push over, but does get you out of that downward spiral with health costs versus money paid out. Nearing the end of chapter 3 and really only 3 types of enemies, standards, armoured and scythe, not sure if anything very different after that. Combat is awesome once you start getting the hang of things, still probably missing a ton of combos though.
