DODGE and BLOCK For those of you that are struggling, I can't emphasize enough the important of block and dodge. Dodge in particular is very powerful because it repositions William quickly for a counter attack. Once you start playing with these moves, particularly when fighting multiple enemies, it'll become clear that there's another layer of depth in the combat system. And it's a lot of fun! The Barman in particular is great to use the dodge on. He's powerful, but he telegraphs his attacks, and when you dodge his attack, you can counter a least one full combo before he attacks again. But dodge and block will totally change the game for you guys if you're not enough doing it already. Brett @kerosenegames kerosenegames.com
Congrats on a 4/4 review from STP! Oh, and very interesting Q&A with the devs on STP if people want to check it out.
FWIW, I've never purchased the infinite Second Wind, and I'm definitely the type of gamer to play through and ignore IAPs. Instead, I focus a lot on the offensive upgrades and owning an infinite amount of at least one offensive technique. Impale is probably my favorite. Impale + Snake Oil / Viper Oil does massive damage...great weapon with bosses. I do end up using a lot of remedies with this approach, but I always earn more gold than I spend on remedies because I try to take very little damage in fights with dodge and block defense. It's interesting to see how people are playing the game now. If you don't get very deep into the combat system, Second Wind is probably the most valuable tool to complete the game though. Brett @kerosenegames kerosenegames.com
That would make sense To be honest I haven't really felt things too affected (even through the caverns) but I'm sure they are. Might try it off for awhile and see if it makes much of a difference to combat. Btw, an arena mode for practice would be nice to see at some stage
Anyone complete chap 5 in Plagued yet? Fell just short last time myself. The 20 mins limit is very tough. I tried to use lots of spirit potions and Impale cards (burned through 30K of gold ). Next time I'll also thrown in some viper oil. Need to find a way to kill those armored zombie quickly (the reaper is actually easy).
I agree with whoever said the combo list should be added in, It would make it more fun to figure out exactly what combination of swipes does what, instead of what I'm doing now (heavy vertical swipes on grunts because they'll get interrupted, horizontal swipes on other enemies because they're faster, have time to block and dodge out). Relyes, I have no idea how you can play through this without second wind. Particularly during the boss fights after the barman (which is my favorite) you're being hit by so many guys at once and there's no way you can do enough damage by keeping your distance unless you have fully upgraded stopping power, and even then you still can't really hit the boss. I just wish there was more strategy to the boss fights. with the barman, since there's only one enemy, you can focus on dodging out of his way when he lunges at you and you can counter and be ready for his next attack. It was genuinely fun to learn his attack pattern and avoid his strikes. I hated the other bosses, especially (SPOILERS) the sheriff. It takes forever to shoot him down, but if you get within striking distance he's incredibly strong and hard to counter. Normally I'd be ok with this, but then he has 2-3 minions at any given time, who just serve to annoy the hell out of me and get in my way when I want to attack him. I get that you want it to be hard, but it just seems like a cop out of what could be a great part of the game. I ended up just cornering the sheriff and using a light combos repeatedly (with blademaster v2 you get that finisher that knocks down normal enemies but just stuns the sheriff, but its enough to start another combo and keep going until he's dead). In short, the boss fights have sooo much potential, but just end up being really annoying in the end (except the barman). Final thing that's incredibly annoying: you guys have to fix the buttons that let you fight multiple enemies. They rarely work, and if they do it's after a few seconds, and too late to attack them because the original enemy is attacking you again.
Ok, well so are you saying if we complete a chapter by losing lesser amount of health, we get more gold coins? Also, those buttons that show off-screen enemies at the sides of the screen...can they be clicked? I was trying yesterday but I didn't seem to change direction. As it is, I think the combat controls are fine. Just the camera needs to zoom out, and you need to be able to move freely in combat (it is kinda locked down at the moment). Movement controls though are subject to criticism. Like the guy above said, I don't know how you can progress so far w/o a health regenerator. Especially since you don't know where the enemies are, and at times I am left to fight them from really awkward camera angles. Trust me, of I didn't get that, the game would have been deleted off my device. Ever since getting the regenerator (not second wind, the other one), I have not died. 5th chapter now. PS: I am having trouble unlocking the blade upgrade (20% more damage or something like that). It says complete one battle using the blade only. I completed a few battles, but didn't unlock for me. Anyone have problems with that? PSS: Chapter 3 is insanely LONG! Took me just over an hour. Chapter 4 in respect took me 20 mins. Maybe want to look into breaking down Chapter 3 into 2 or 3 smaller portions?
didnt work for me either. i just unlocked it with gold. trust me, its definitely worth it. PS: you guys might want to look into raising the amount of gold for unlocking skills, and maybe lowering the cost of one-use skills a bit to encourage people to unlock the skills manually instead of buying their way through the skill trees. As is, I was able to pay to unlock pretty much any skill I wanted, which left little incentive to do the challenges.
Finished first round, now on through to sick. Good call retaining money and unlocks. Will definitely be purchasing Ep2 day one, plan to continue this through but have had a lot of fun and sure you can improve on the formula. Just one note, I didn't die once through an entire play through but I'm guessing that will change with the difficulty ramp. Oh and again, practice arena please
Took me around an hour and a half but I finally got mostly comfortable with the controls, now I'm having a lot of fun. I must admit, the swiping to attack works really well. Just let me have a dual stick control scheme to control the darn camera!
True that. I realized, looking at the amount of golds to unlock some skill, and the challenge that says like "use 5 of X skill cards"...it can be cheaper to auto unlock than manually do it. PS: I definitely think it'd be better to decrease (slightly) the gold needed for the one-time skill cards so we can use them more often.
My thoughts exactly. But we're not gonna get that (clearly) no best we just stfu and play what we have. Really wish I could control the camera and movements better....combat controls are pretty decent.
That was the point of the statement yeah, I would have thought I'd made my feelings on Second Wind pretty clear?
Upgrade Skills or Attacks please? I'm back in the game. Too much positive chatter got me to delve in further and it's pretty good stuff. It is repetitive as all heck (think NOVA and MC3, even IFB2, and the variety, albeit limited, those games offer where this appears to be the same enemies, same fights). The combat is more similar to a game like NYZ2 in that aspect IMHO, although even NYZ2 has more environments so to say. Excuse me if this has been covered: What do you dudes find is your proven Upgrade strategy please? Is it better too upgrade the 'skills' (ie. Blade Master, Brute Force), or to put your money/stones into the combat/attack 'cards' that show up during the fight (ie. Impale, Unrelenting Assault) and make those Infinite?? Or a combination of both, but I'm already past Chapter4, and haven't gotten enough 'currency' to loosely do both. I have been focusing my stones toward upgrading the skills like Blade Master and Brute Force, as they seem more readily tangible. I did get the Second Wind (go figure), and got that Infinitely of course, but haven't done any of the other 'attack cards' to that degree. I figure with this method, I can always just hit that Second Wind (I suck bad), then rely on my upgraded skills, as when I get the chance to use an 'Attack card' and try something new, if things go sour quick, I have to wait for the next opportunity to Second Wind and sometimes risk dying before it comes. I think I'm probably picking the safer route? Thanks in advance! This adventure is certainly grabbing a hold of me now, although, softly, considering the influx of games we are lucky enough to alternate between. Random question; is Kerosene considered Indie? Thanks again!
I'd say you're on the right track. I personally found stopping power to be very useful since the gun is really underpowered without it, and blade master will definitely be useful too, as will brute force.
Tried this game for 2 chapters, couldn't believe the amount of complaints in this thread. This game is amazing and revolutionary. Graphics and gameplay are top notch, and once you try the touch controls you wouldn't go back to dual stick. Runs extremely smoothly on my iPhone 4, which makes me wonder how so many previous games I've played had way lousier graphics and yet framerate is still so bad. 5/5, will throw money at Kerosene and Luma Arcade again.
^ I've found it makes playing Infinity Blade style games feel a bit plastic, they nailed combat perfect for touch. Nav controls I don't mind, I do like to walk and look around (properly) but they work fine.
I must admit I haven't spent much time on the gun, really just maxing the health and spirit improvements plus brute force, moving to part way through blade master now.
Hi all, another Luma Arcade developer here. I'm really humbled by all the feedback we've been getting on this thread! Thanks to everyone for buying and playing the game. I really do hope you all enjoy playing it as much as we enjoyed making it, as clichéd as that surely sounds! On the issue of the offscreen indicators, we are well aware of this problem, and we already have a fix. Unfortunately, the resolution came just a few days too late to make it into our first release, and we're really sorry about the frustration caused by the buttons not working as intended. We've also made a few small adjustments to how those buttons work, and these improvements, as well as the responsiveness fix, will be in our next update which will hit the store as soon as possible. I'm also sorry to hear that a lot of you are having trouble with the difficulty of the game. Luma Arcade and Kerosene are a very small team, and we're almost entirely a group of dedicated, old-school and hardcore gamers. So we made a game that we found challenging, the kind of game that we wanted to play. We're really proud of the combat mechanics we've developed, and we think we have something with more gameplay depth than many other mobile games on the market - we have tons of fun playing it internally! Unfortunately, we also have about a year and half more experience playing the game than most people do, and we might've done a less-than-stellar job balancing our the initial difficulty curve. We're constantly looking into ways to smooth out this experience, to give players a safe, comfortable place to practise their moves and combos, and to better highlight the kind of capabilities William has, something we concede is a little opaque. For those of you having trouble, an important tip to bear in mind is that William can dodge (and block) pretty much at any time his feet are on the ground and he's not swinging his blade. William is also completely invulnerable to damage while rolling! You can use this fact to your strategic advantage to outmanoeuvre enemies. Also, note that tapping with two fingers right at the bottom of the screen causes William to roll backwards (towards the camera), which can also help you get out of sticky situations. That said, we're aware that this is a little bit difficult to pull off on iPhones, though, so we're looking into ways to make that a better for those players. Finally, I wanted to echo a sincere thanks to everyone who played the game and offered their feedback and (especially) their criticism. While we can't respond to everyone directly, we do take everyone's comments to heart in an effort to make the most awesome game that we can! Thank you again, from Luma Arcade and Kerosene!
