Why is everything so expensive in this game? I just want to unlock the archer and I can hardly afford it. I feel constantly stuck in this game, not having the tokens to buy anything, but instead looking at the screen for 10 minutes straight at 2x as the animations repeat themselves over and over, saving tokens to buy 4x. I find the grind is just too boring for me, and the game has run its course. Clearly this 2nd installation was designed with IAP in mind. The first DC (before IAP), now that was a gem.
Lots of games have things that you can figure out for yourself, or look up online if you want. Lots of people enjoy that. You may not be one of them, but that's not the same thing as "bad design". It's just your preference to be told everything. Different people feel differently, many of them even like discovering things and figuring them out for themselves, and it helps to have the backup of looking online if you get stuck or frustrated.
Rock Golem has the exact same description in the Manual (Orc Horde R4) but I can damage it fine. Neither the manual nor any in-game information gives a new player any indication as to why he can kill the Rock Golem easily but the Crystal Golem requires Spoiler Melwen and a Fire Rod and a Cavalier tank I have figured it out by now ( I still can't figure out how to 5-star that particular level with my current stats and equipment - even though I can beat the final level on heroic with hundreds of gold left over). The issue is that the game itself is frustrating for a new player because it doesn't teach him why he has to buy a fire wand for that enemy. One of the tutorials tells me that if a monster has really high defense, I should use infantry because archers won't damage it. It doesn't tell me that if infantry and mages don't damage it then I need to upgrade to wizards (I don't even know if you have access to wizards when you first play that level) or be playing as Melwen (apparently the General simply cannot get a perfect score on that level until he has progressed further) and have a Fire Wand. That seems like a lot for a new player to infer. I'm not bad at video games and I had to go to an online forum (this one) to get answers. The monster stats for Crystal Minion/Golem don't show up in the academy until after you 5-star the level, which means you have to kill them on Master difficulty in order to get any hints about how to damage them at all. This is bad design and should be fixed. I have no issue with the manual being online. I meant that it is frustrating to have to go to a message board to ask other players for help on such an early enemy in the game, rather than being able to find an answer in the manual.
Boy, there are a lot of classic video games tht you should stay far away from. Overall, games have been moving much more in the direction of spoon-feeding everything, plus of course there are walkthroughs and forums if you have any trouble. I think that's mostly good, but the problem is, you train a whole generation of players who never want to figure anything out for themselves, even the idea is alien to them.
Without making me dig too far for an answer - Do I need to play the first one first, or can I jump into this one head first and still enjoy it and not miss anything?
It is a lot for a new player to infer. But, some of it you figure out as you play. You try different things and see what works better. If you get stuck then you can read and find out what can be done to help.
Totally inappropriate to be attacking someone raising what they believe to be a legit complaint. Sure, some games dont give you a lot of info and its obvious you need to trial and error. Here, there is a bestiary, and it seems like there is info to be had that could reduce the trial and error somewhat. However, in its current form, the bestiary is more frustrating than helpful. Try finding the red "birds" and you wont find anything...no way to tell they are actually "vampires" without being told because the picture in the bestiary looks like a traditional vampire, not a red bird. Just like the poster, I had no idea the crystal golem didnt show up in the bestiary till you 5 star'd the level, and wasted time looking for that too. If you are going to make a bestiary/almanac type thing and its confusing, misleading and frustrating, of course there are going to be (valid) complaints. Even the hardcore fans on the forum admit that alamanac type thing is poorly implemented. This complaint has nothing to do with being against TDs that require a little experimentation rather than pure strategizying.
Direct quote: "The issue is that the game itself is frustrating for a new player because it doesn't teach him why he has to buy a fire wand for that enemy." So yes, that is what it's about.
No...the almanac/bestiary thing LOOKS like it is going to spoonfeed you that, leaving you free to plan what goes where and gets leveled how and the like. That would leave you free to focus on the strategy with reduced trial and error. But it doesnt actually work out that way. If the game had no almanac/bestiary but told you that certain enemies had resistances/vulnerabilities to certain enemies, then there would be no valid complaint, except that someone doesnt like a game with so much trial and error. Maybe that is what the prior poster was saying, that is possible. However, they also complained about the alamanac/bestiary. It really looks like the game is designed to eliminate/minimize the guessing about particularly enemies, (via the alamanac/bestiary) when it doesnt, and that is a natural frustration. It is almost as if the text of the game's description said "focus on the strategy, no painful trial and error to learn monster attributes" and then went ahead and made you do trial and error anyway. I personally do not like trial and error very much, and typically get sick of tower defense games after a while. I buy them knowing full well what to expect. But then I see something like the alamanac/bestiary, and I get happy, thinking that DC will be different. Then I spend 5 minutes trying to find the red bird, only to conclude it isnt there. Its frustrating.
I don't want to be told everything. I am referring to one specific situation in one specific game where a new player could get frustrated by the lack of any indication why a monster isn't taking damage - even on Easy Mode. You seem to repeatedly confuse my very particular, directed criticism of this game as a general statement about all situations in all games. The problem here, though you are clearly too dense to get it even after several iterations, is the inconsistency. This particular game (I'm not talking about every game, or games in general) explains the hell out of all the game mechanics and how to kill each type of enemy. Then it throws a monster at you in Novice Mode that requires a specific item to beat and is completely silent about it. The tips even say something like "Up to Master Difficulty, you can beat the levels without needing special items", but here I am on the forums with the devs telling me that the key to winning that level is a special item. Is it also good design to lie to the player in the "helpful hints"?
1-How to reset a charachter ( turn it to level zero and start from beginning? And how to redistribute points if u did a bad build) 2-What is the usefullness of power and resistance? I found them useless 3-What is the difference between the mana of hero and mana of mages? 4-Is cunning increase gold from killed enemies by any soldier or those killed by hero only? 5-why should we make melwen so attack points so high, though we can put all the points needed to increas her attack, in mages(Mage commander) and we increas the power of mages which their power if upgraded bypasses melwen, and melwen is one charchter while mages we can use many of them?
Everyone who doesn't agree with you is not "dense". Sometimes people just don't agree. Also, you keep changing your complaint---maybe that is the real inconsistency here.
Notice that I said "teach him" and not "tell him" or "force him". Good games, including many classic games, tell you their mechanics clearly and then force you into situations where you have the option to think critically, experiment until you get lucky, or simply be skillful and observant. For example, in Mega Man (can we agree that this is a good and classic game?), the game doesn't tell you which weapon is good against which boss. But it still lets you beat the boss with your blaster, as long as you are good enough to avoid damage. It also teaches you which weapon works through simple (and quick) experimentation. Good, fun design. In this game, to figure out that I need a fire wand to damage Crystal Golems, I would have to go buy each type of wand (or wait for them to drop) and repeatedly go through half the level just to find out if I got the right one. And that's a requirement - I cannot overcome the lack of a fire wand with nimble fingers or a superior build order. On one of the earliest levels! Bad design. What's more, no other monster in this game requires that much experimentation. If it's so much fun, why not have it in every level all the time? Why just on this one monster, on easy mode, not on the final level, and not even the final boss of that level? Why put the only speedbump of this type there? Your attempt to call me some sort of newcomer gamer as a general comment has you defending this particular piece of nonsense. A couple of good points of reference here would be to watch AVGN's review of Mega Man X and then his review of Milon's Secret Castle.
My complaint has been the same - in a game which tells you most of its mechanics in great detail, why does it in this one instance (inconsistently) require me to go on an easter egg hunt to figure out that the big green rock monsters halfway through a level halfway through easy mode require a specific item from the shop to defeat? You aren't dense for disagreeing with me - you are dense for repeatedly misunderstanding the difference between making general statements (OMG ALL GAMEZ SHULD HAVE WALKTHRU AND CHEAT MODE WTF THIS IS TOO HARD) and making a specific statement about this game, level, and monster.
Man, I've been off for a while. (got busy and had some unfortunate family stuff come up) Thought I'd chime in since I've been playing this and have thoroughly enjoyed it thus far. 1. Go to the black market, go into the 5th tab, and buy the Crystal of Forgetfulness for 80 coins. 2. Power increases your hero's and unit's spell power. Resistance increases your defense against things like fire damage. Have you noticed the little icons above your unit's heads? 3. Wisdom increases your hero's mana. Mage commander increases your mage's mana. 4. Don't know! I haven't used/payed attention to cunning. 5. If I understand your question correctly: Melwen is always there. She's a static unit that you get to use at the beginning of every map. Everything else has to be bought with gold like in any other TD. And, the higher the difficulty, the less gold you start out with.
@FiveJane I'm going to try and keep my comment super short. I think the gripe you have is being blown out of proportion, at least a little bit. The whole entire game is trial and error until you unlock the academy. After that, you unlock the info for most of the enemies. Having an enemy that doesn't unlock isn't the end of the word, especially when it's called a Crystal Golem and looks a lot like ice. Plus, you get a ton of fire wands from loot, so you don't have to go to the shop. And, once you get wizards, they shoot fireballs. The point of a strategy game is to take you outside of your comfort zone. Plus, I'm assuming most hardcore (maybe even casual) TD gamers will try most unit types and upgrades to see what they like/works the best. This isn't the first game to have question marks or unlocked "whatever" because of some hidden requirement, and I'm sure it's not the last. The devs apparently had the idea that gamer's would figure it out for themselves. I did. Letting a Crystal Golem get past me wasn't the end of the world. At most, the only design flaw was not having a hint somewhere that says some enemies will only show info if you 5 star the level. Hell, there might be. There seems to be a ton of hints, and I know I haven't seen all of them. At the end of the day, it's a small inconsistency (if that's what you want to call it) that can be easily overcome with, in my experience, only a small amount of trial & error or some simple logic/inference. @artnj Lol! I guess it just comes down to how you look at things. I knew that the brown bat was the red bats in the game because it was the only thing that looked like them. I didn't even think of the different choice of color as a design flaw until you brought it up. I'm not trying to say that these are or are not problems, but they seem to be quite small, IMHO.
Just adding to what Goofy said... To beat higher levels with Melwen, you're probably going to want spells (the rightmost tab in the Elf Hut). Power increases the damage of spells, while Wisdom increases the mana Melwen has to cast them. Resistance is helpful for fighting Banshees, who do magical attacks. Banshees only attack magic units (Melwen, mages), so I wouldn't worry about anyone else's Resistance stat. Sure, they might get caught on fire or something, but that doesn't happen much. Cunning affects all kills, not just those by your hero. Unless you have 100 cunning (and you don't), you'll only get the bonus for some kills (e.g., for monsters that give one coin, 20 cunning means that one in five of them will give two coins). Mage Commander is really good for Melwen. However, you can only bring skills up to level 50 (until you've beaten every level at a high difficulty). Personally, I recommend maxing out Mage Commander first, then possibly considering Sorcery to increase Melwen's damage. It depends on your play style, i.e., are you depending a lot on archers, or are you using spells, and on what equipment you give Melwen.
Fivejane and other people: This argument is boring. Okay, so Fivejane wishes the game provided more information. Not everyone agrees on how much information a game should provide. Got it. Can we please move on?
