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Mordheim and other Early Access titles

Started by Still Not George, November 24, 2015, 05:26:46 PM

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Still Not George

Being a fan of the Necromunda-only-fantasy tabletop game Mordheim, I jumped in on the Early Access for it's videogame license. But the betas were fundamentally unplayable and I had Crusader Kings 2 and 7 Days To Die, so it fell to the back of my gaming queue and it's only with the recent announcement of it going on release (yeah, sure, whatever) that I decided to come back to it and try the "finished" product.

The scare quotes are there because this is still rather clearly a buggy mess of a game and obviously rather unpolished in a number of ways. Most obviously, the load times, fucking hell the load times - this game can take anything up to 5 minutes to load a level! I'm not exactly using a slow HDD either, there is absolutely no excuse for Spectrum-length loading screens and there hasn't been for 20+ years.

But once you get past the ridiculously long loading screens (I MEAN 5 MINUTES FUCKING WHAT), it's actually quite a good game. Much as XCOM decided to lift the core mechanics from Necromunda, Rogue Factor seem to have decided to create a kinda-sorta-XCOM, with an initiative ladder breaking up the turn flow rather nicely. Actions are actually slightly more old-school X-Com, with every character having a number of movement and attack points (heroes usually have enough for a long move and two attacks, henches about half that). Since you can't rely on overwatch mechanics for a primarily close-quarters fantasy game, they also included a number of "stances" which your characters can enter - an Ambush stance which counter-charges enemies that get too close, a Parry stance for characters with swords and/or shields, and a Dodge stance if you have some movement left, with a bunch more added through skills later on.

The end result is a rather tense game of position and tactics, with stances being picked to take advantage of the enemy and a vicious RNG which is reminiscent of the worst excesses of the XCOM games. (The creators have kindly provided a log of the game's "rolls" so you can actually determine that yes, you did just miss a 79% shot FOUR TIMES IN A ROW.) The creators unfortunately seem to have decided to favour close-combat and guns, with bows and crossbows doing desultory damage and pathetic accuracy drop-off at any kind of range, but you can create a very effective line of flintlocks as a Reiklander warband.

On that subject, the tabletop game has a fuckload of different warbands available just in the base rules, with umpteen other warbands having been added in various magazines etc over the years. This version only presents four; the missile-weapon-heavy Reiklander Mercenaries, the heavy-armour-and-hammer-happy Sisters of Sigmar battle nuns, the moustache-twirlingly evil Cult of the Possessed, and the old favourite Clan Eshin Skaven ratmen. Each plays rather differently; Reiklanders are all about dem guns and a few heavy armoured murderbastards to hold the enemy off the gunline, the Sisters are heavy hammerers with excellent morale but individually quite squishy even with the armour, the Possessed are best used as a great-weapon wielding death mob backed up by excellent magic and probably the best advancement in the game, and the Skaven are unbelievably fast and tend to get the drop on everyone all the time (but fall apart against any kind of concerted opposition).

I fully expect to see the Undead, Elves, Dwarves etc along with the other Human Mercenary factions show up as DLC at some point in the future. The other Human factions are even mentioned in the game's intro and the starting speech for the Reiklanders. But despite the limited numbers, the range of play styles is good in the game as it is. Each warband plays rather differently from each other.

The campaign game is of course where the meat of anything related to XCOM lives, and this is... OK, if weirdly unsatisfying. I think the lack of base building hurts it somewhat. On the tabletop the campaign advancement is 10 minutes after the fight, so it's naturally quite brief if eventful. Here it's mainly used to induce the XCOM "HOLY SHIT GOTTA DO MORE MISSIONS" thing by having your "sponsor" make unreasonable demands on you to collect wyrdstone (which is lying around the battlefields, forcing you to send much-needed minions to get it, while the AI doesn't give a shit for it and just mobs the rest of you). Injuries also build up alongside skills, and can be REALLY vicious - I had a Reiklander Captain lose an arm and a leg in the same mission. In particular, head wounds that cause "stupidity" (which requires a roll every turn or that unit does nothing other than execute a really funny animation where they seem to be barking happily to themselves) can make a warrior next to useless.

One other thing. The game is tough. VERY tough. I've been playing for a couple of days now and I still haven't managed to earn an "Impressive" unit (things like Possessed or Rat Ogres). The difficulty curve is well-modelled at the beginning but much as with XCOM you reach a point where every mission available is at Brutal difficulty and you've got nothing left but a pack of twitching armless drunkards with Stupidity.

The graphics are nice even though I have to keep the quality level down due to my ancient machine. In particular I like the animation work, with most characters having a range of movement missing in many similar games, particularly given the amount of climbing and jumping they do. It's hardly Assassin's Creed stuff, but it gets the job done very well. The environments are weird Late Medieval town stuff with almost Tim Burton-like shapes, nearly all of which can be moved around in to allow you to snipe from windows and leap from walkways, and the game does a rather excellent job of procedurally-generating entire levels crammed with them. Maybe that's what it spends all that fucking time doing at the beginning of each level.

In summary - barring the COMPLETELY FUCKING INSANE LOADING TIMES this is actually a pretty damn good game if you're in to XCOM style close-up tactics with a campaign element. I don't know what the multiplayer is like, except that it doesn't yet support full multiplayer campaigns, only Skirmishes, which is a shame. Still, it's worth a solid recommendation.

***

So that's one good title come out of Early Access in amongst all the shovelshit and outright con-jobs like Starforge etc. Anyone know any others?

TheFalconMalteser

Thanks for the review, I've had my eye on this but I think the loading times will keep me away.  Did you ever play tabletop - is there XP skill levelling up?

Still Not George

Quote from: TheFalconMalteser on November 24, 2015, 07:07:28 PM
Thanks for the review, I've had my eye on this but I think the loading times will keep me away.  Did you ever play tabletop - is there XP skill levelling up?

I did, yeah. And the levelling up works in pretty much the same way - XP gained for specific things achieved in the battle, like taking enemies out of action, surviving, winning etc - and when you reach a specific XP threshold you level up. You also gain bonuses you can add to stats along the way. Generally you get to perform minor upgrades after every battle and buy new skills every 3-5 battles, assuming they survive that long.

In addition to this, your warband also gains XP and gradually levels up. This unlocks new units and opens up additional unit slots and grants a few other miscellaneous bonuses. Finally there's the "Veteran System" which is kind of like XP for the player - it is carried over between all campaigns and allows you small bonuses upfront like "new warbands start with +25 gold" or "purchases at the shop are 5% cheaper". One even gives you a contact with a particular kind of merchant or smith who will occasionally give you items for free.

madhair60

Any early access cons are basically nullified by Steam's quick, easy-to-use refund system these days.

Sorry for the slightly reductive post.

Still Not George

Quote from: madhair60 on November 24, 2015, 08:09:14 PM
Any early access cons are basically nullified by Steam's quick, easy-to-use refund system these days.
Doesn't help with things like Starforge where the team burn through their EA money and decide to mark the half-finished mess "complete" and move on to the next game.