I love how most are assuming no one here has talked about gameplay??? There are loads of gameplay impressions. Yeah the game looks nice but I couldn't give two .... About that, the actual gameplay is more than good enough. Lock picking, riding, fighting, exploring. realise that the people who like this game are not posting here as much because the game is too good and it's better to play it than have to post every few forum pages between all the naysaying. With a game like this posting gameplay impressions could give spoilers too, and it's tricky to get that balance right. There are bugs but they aren't anything the devs can't fix, and they will have to any way to keep their reputation. I could say how each "GAMEPLAY aspect interests me but quite frankly I'd rather play the game because 4-5 pages after this there will be (yet again) more people saying how no one talks about gameplay. So let me say this. The GAMEPLAY IS BRILLIANT! GET OFF THE FORUM AND DOWNLOAD!! GO GO!
no. TA was certainly sold on the game. Crescent Moon is a studio with games that seem sound but are kind of boring to play... True for all the games I've played from them. So how this one is better on that side? Is there a fun factor into it? Also the game is "only" 800MG once uncompressed, compared to MC4, NFS MW and many other recent games that reaches 2G, how can they offer the so supposed rich universe & wonderful graphism?
I watched a preview video of some gameplay and there were some small things that were a bit off putting. A guy was attacking a goblin and he was standing on like a 3 ft ledge and the goblin was stuck just trying to walk up to him, and got an easy kill. Bad AI or bad pathing, i'm not sure. He was using a blunderbuss and the sound for it was pretty bad. Small things, but that was just in a 3 minute video. Im still on the fence with this one.
Here are some thoughts on how I feel the movement controls could be improved. All these points have been mentioned many times by others, but I thought it would be worth combining it all in one post. These impressions are based on playing the game on the iPad, and may not necessarily apply to the iPhone. Left-Hand Controls I feel that the character movement should be incremental, so that moving the control pad slightly results in a walk, while a larger movement makes him run. It is currently very awkward trying to pinpoint a position accurately (picking up objects, talking to characters, etc) when you are constantly darting around frantically even with the slightest input movement. It is particularly frustrating in smaller environments such as rooms. Right-Hand Controls The whole of the right-hand side of the screen should be used for looking / camera movement, and I feel that it currently moves too slowly in relation to user input, especially compared to the fast character running movement. It would be great if we could configure the button positions to our liking, but if that isn't possible and they have to be fixed, maybe something like this would be a better configuration, creating space at the lower-right for camera movement.
I keep trying to rewrite my post but this is a very misleading and bad comment because it absolutely depends on the tools used and how much stuff programmers jam into a game like unused assets and general garbage. Megabytes, gigabytes, bits, bytes and what ever don't reflect size of game. When computers barely had 1gb of hard drive people were developing games that were far larger than modern games are now. With the best intentions, you don't understand how things work, sorry. You basically listed GAMELOFT and EA games, well for a start EA games is the company that destroyed previous sence of good programming and any care about memory management on any system, they churned out crapper games ruining various IP's like command and conquer. Made those games cost more memory and made them shorter, and Gameloft just simply don't know how to program.
Believe me, the graphics aren't any where good when compared to MC4, Bastion, NfS MW, Sky Gamblers: SR and Dead Trigger! Nothing to write home about. I won't even mention the horrendous wild life animation. Most of them seem to walk on air. One thing is for sure, This not a 5 star game. Not even 4 really!
While I want to say away from parallels to Skyrim an other open world RPGs as much as I can, I need to mention that Skyrim was many people's GOTY in 2011 - mine included - and that game was littered with bugs. And compared to Ravensword it had a massive development time. Fallout 3/NV (probably my two favourite games ever) crashed and had loads of bugs. I could argue that bugs add to the experience (and they certainly do), but even with tr assumption that all bugs are bad, that is a trade off for massive open world RPGs. The sense of exploration, adventure etc has to come at a price, and while bugs are annoyances they are ignorable, and in such a type of game shouldn't go against this. If you had a bug in an endless runner or a dual stick shooter that is bad because it can be avoided; with open world games the world is too encompassing that everything cannot be tested. So why such a high rating when, as one commenter stated on the review that iOS platforms are more than capable to run open world games and thus one must not be treated as special? Because the time and the risk that goes into developing such a game is huge. With all respect to iOs as a platform, it is more viable for a developer to make a 99c game that will only take a few months to make and is somewhat disposable than an epic game like Ravensword. No developers thus far have made the risk of putting thousands of dollars and two-three years of development time into an open world game like Ravensword as there is a big possibility that it may flop, just like hundreds of cheaper games. Ravensword sure isn't perfect by any means but it's one of the first attempts to making a proper, huge video game akin to those on store shelves for PS3 and for that, regardless of bugs, it deserves some credit.
@diffusion8r – very well said, we all need to respect the fact that crescent moon games is taking a risk in such an expensive, long term, high quality project such as this and is leading the way for the iOS platform being recognized as a top of the line gaming platform. It's games like this that will eventually turn iPhones into the handheld gaming platform
Absolutely, bugs will happen on a game this large yet if a dev team takes a couple of years to make a game this large for the enjoyment of their customers I'd be willing to bet my last penny they will want to fix the bugs inside it. Quoted for truth.
I dont think he's disagreeing with you on the games issues, but everything he said was indeed true. You cant judge a games quality, graphics, or content just on how large of a download it is. I could make an iOS game thats 3GB and looks like Pong, because most of that space is cinematics, voice tracks, and other misc files. Textures are just a fraction of the download. EA has been known to let IPs go to crap after buying them out, through their legendary mismanagement and greed. Indie developers have passion for the game they're making, because it's their baby. When EA buys a property, it's not about making an awesome game anymore. With that said, yeah so far it's looking like this game is Aralon 2.0
Yes, CM made a buisness decision, therefore this is a good game. Also, bugs actually make a game better, because
iOS gaming is a victim of its own success in many ways. Name as many properly open world iOS games that aren't ports...I can only think of this and Aralon. Why is this? Because it simply isn't viable to put to much money and time into a what is a relatively niche genre when it could easily flop. Now, while the audacious move to make such a game is commendable, it doesn't make this a good game (although deserves CM more credit than they're getting) and I didn't say that was the reason it deserves five stars...the fact that it is an open world game that has unique, lively, engrossing locations is a key factor and is only because they decided to make such a move. Unfortunately going back to Skyrim, why did it receive GOTY when it was buggy, had average graphics and OK controls and gameplay? Mainly because of the world and the feeling it created during gameplay. I also did not say bugs make a game better; at least not for Ravensword. This game is no way perfect whatsoever, but it shouldn't be held in the same expectations as a game like Angry Birds. I don't expect angry birds to be engrossing and massive, and I don't expect Ravensword to be bug-free.
A few nitpicks: - framerate is not great on large areas (iPad 2) - hit button is too far apart from the edge of the screen. You should be able to customize button layout. It baffles me that this still isn't standard on iOS games with virtual buttons - camera sensitivity is too low even on max, which makes it playing on first person really difficult - you can't turn the camera on the free space below the buttons, no idea why
They are using Unity so yeah, I know what I am talking about but hey, just keep on deciding on what I know and don't know if it helps your argumentation. I did not talk about only the universe but also the graphics so everything put together, with the engine being what it is, this can't be that jaw dropping. Assets, textures aren't magical stuff. The only point they got for not having a huge file size is basically closed to no voice over which always eat up a lot and cinematic but i don't know for that.
I think the biggest problem iOS has is that it's so fast moving. This game has been in development for three years or so (it was announced on this forum 2.5 years ago). Compare devices from back then to what we have now. The iPad didn't exist when the original Ravensword 2 thread was created! The largest resolution available on iOS was 480x320. Now we're playing this in 2048x1536! Bethesda also spent years on Skyrim. But when they started, they knew exactly what the Xbox 360 and the PS3 were going to be like three years later. Much easier to plan that way.
I agree, and it's another reason why games like this are so rare in the App Store. It's a bit disheartening however that even though iOS is scarily powerful now, there aren't many games that are truly 'epic' In the sense we'd expect on consoles. I think iOS is simply moving too fast for the actual games to keep up.
Oh absolutely, although I suspect the amount of bugs might have something to do with the release date. You did say though "I could argue that bugs add to the experience (and they certainly do)", which is technically right I guess, but still hilarious..
