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[nenjin]

And I haven't gotten to the casinos yet or whatever they're called in WftO. Still, a giant golden shrine only a few tiles from your Dungeon Core is a far cry from an economy you set up for infinite gold.

Re: Dungeons. I wouldn't go near it with a 10 foot poll. As a theme park game, it's ok. As a dungeon game, it suffers a lot from the theme park design. You end up building non-sensical or thematic dungeons for the express purpose of heroes walking through it, so you can just murder them when they reach your dungeon heart, anyways. It's a game where the whole crux of gameplay doesn't even really matter that much.

[umiman]

I like it.

There's A LOT of bugs but I like it. It feels identical to Dungeon Keeper which is great!

There are some niggles that annoy me which I will place into list form because who doesn't like lists?

1. Not being able to get skeletons from prisons annoy me a lot more than it should. I would say it's my #1 problem with the game even on top of all the crazy amount of bugs.

2. Sometimes it feels like my rooms are worthless. I can't tell if the tavern is being used or if my minions are doing anything in particular without some close observation. However, given that the cultist actually has lines while using the archive, I suspect this might be a work in progress and will extend to the other minions later on.

3. There's quite a lot of missing animations and missing everything, really.

4. The campaign can get quite unfairly challenging. It's also way too fast paced for a keeper game. It's also quite short...

5. It feels like I can't get enough minions. For example, I might only have 5 spiders even though I made enough space for 10. Might be a flaw of the campaign though, as they might use the same system where the amount of minions is limited.

6. Your minions don't seem to fight each other any more...

7. What the fuck is up with taverns? I have them. They're big enough. Shut the fuck up.

That's basically about it. Then there's the millions of bugs but meh.

They've definitely got the whole keeper thing going and the voicework is sublime. I love it. I love that they got the same guy to come back to do the mentor role (though I think now he's your dark god). He changed his voice up so it doesn't sound the same as the old one but I think this was on purpose to avoid litigation. You can see in some parts he uses his old, original keeper voice. It's fine though, since it's just as amusing and sinister.

I'm looking forward to when it's actually finished about a year or so from now, hehe.

[Zangi]

Apparently they've been updating this a lot... tiny bit more stable I reckon.  Wish survival gave more time between waves.

EDIT: They've definitely put some attention to the campaign... where I went to the sandbox during the save the other guy mission and the announcer tells you that you are an asshole for playing house while they need your help.

[Puzzlemaker]

So I recently played this again, and they fixed a lot of the problems.  But, as I was playing, something was missing.  It took me awhile, but I finally figured out what it was.

There are too many options in the game, and at least half of them need to be cut.  The ones remaining should be changed as to have a more specific usage, because right now it's overwhelming.

Anyway, it's still fun, but not as good as dungeon keeper 2, sadly.

[martinuzz]

One of the best updates was the one where they added an option to change game speed. This really transformed the game from something something flashy ADHD something game to a decent-ish dungeon keeper sequel.
It just really lacks pet dungeons, and the campaign could be made somewhat harder, but overall, the dev(s?) have really been listening to player feedback and steadily improving the game.

[nenjin]

So they just released their first expansion for this (free to backers) and I decided to revisit it...

Wow. They really put the polish on this baby.

-Performance: Good. Got a little stuttery when I'd let it run for several hours and was alt-tabbing, but otherwise performance is smooth at max settings on my machine. Load times when first launching the program are a little long but after that it all seems to go smoothly.

-Systems. All the parts seem to work now. Payday, feeding, all that jazz. The animations aren't still the best on some of these things and I can sense there's some abstraction going on (notably pay retrieval) but other than that it seems to meet expectations.

-Voice overs. OMG voice overs. So many! Every monster and hero has at least 4 or 5 lines, probably more. The babble and murmur of activity in the dungeon is now believable. Having like 5 dwarves in your prison is like sitting in on a dwarven frat party. The narrator just has a shit load of lines as well. TBH I'm fairly impressed with the audio engineering. Not necessarily for the clarity of cleverness of it, but just for the sheer amount of stuff now in the game.

-Controls. Ermagherd. So. Many. Rally. Options. You can rally all troops, just beasts, just wraiths, just Titans, make custom warbands, form warbands in possession mode, rally each of those warbands......it's a full suite of modern RTS unit grouping. I haven't really bothered with it much because it only seems necessary for MP but it's nice that it's there.

-Campaign. I don't know if this has changed much since I last played it but I've made a lot of progress now and....it's actually fun. I never made it more than a few missions in DKII's campaign because it just seemed like a glorified tutorial. And WftO's is too, to an extent. But by mission 5 while they're still trickling out new features to you, they're also hitting you with legit challenges. Several missions are just waves and waves and waves of enemy heroes hitting your defenses. While none of it was particularly tough there's enough going on and enough threat of losing that you do have to try.

The game does still definitely feel a little too fast paced for SP, but if you drop game speed down 50% (there is no pause) then it achieves an appropriately sedate pace that allows you to both keep up with things and stop to smell the roses/corpses/Chunder farts.

Previously when I'd tried to play this I just wasn't connecting with the theme, for various reasons. The unfinished nature of things, the bugs, the missing features.....Now I've probably put 8 hours into it over the last couple days and it's got me snared. I haven't run into many bugs although I've experienced both a crash and what looks like a broken level progress script in Mission 9. (Which is kind of a variant of earlier missions where you need to stop masses of enemies from crossing the map by any means necessary.)

All in all if you were waiting on this to finish up.....I think it's pretty much as polished as you can expect. While it's slightly less engrossing as a SP game than I remember DKII being, at this point, it's got all the features of DKII and a lot more to boot. Great monster variety, great room variety, a decent selection of traps (still haven't unlocked them all), potion making, ritual magic, spells. I feel pretty comfortable saying that WftO is the spiritual successor to DKII. It just took a while for the game to live up to it.

[Zangi]

Did they finally expand on the My Pet Dungeon / sandbox stuff?  Cause I never was into the competitive side these guys lean toward.

[nenjin]

There is the "My Dungeon" now which is a persistent dungeon level you can go to between campaign maps. You get the build options you've unlocked for during the campaign to populate it, and iirc it has a hero gate. You can revisit it, reset it completely or do whatever with it.

TBH though, it didn't seem that interesting. It's literally a 90x90 or w/e map that is solid dirt, two gateways, your dungeon heart and the hero gate.

So while it does what's advertised, it doesn't seem that interesting versus, say, creating your own larger custom map with interesting features and what not. Which if you're going to do that you might as well build the whole dungeon in the editor then just load the map to see what it plays like....

[Aklyon]

All in all if you were waiting on this to finish up.....I think it's pretty much as polished as you can expect. While it's slightly less engrossing as a SP game than I remember DKII being, at this point, it's got all the features of DKII and a lot more to boot. Great monster variety, great room variety, a decent selection of traps (still haven't unlocked them all), potion making, ritual magic, spells. I feel pretty comfortable saying that WftO is the spiritual successor to DKII. It just took a while for the game to live up to it.

Awesome.

[nenjin]

I think the reason I'm posting about this is now is I'm actually feeling the theme, finally.

It's the little things. Like, killing someone in a Torture Chamber creates a Lost Soul minion with a level buffed based on the experience level of the creature that died. They're invisible minions that just randomly roam the dungeon and scout for you. Is filling your dungeon up with Lost Souls super useful? No. Super flavorful? Abso-fucking-lutely.

Or how corrupted heroes look like evil versions of themselves.

Or how there's actual rats in the prison you can pick up and put down because....reasons?

Or how the undead are literally just waves of faceless, level-less monsters you can crank out hordes of in the right conditions, but completely fall apart when the Necromancer who summoned them is killed.

Or how one of the cultists lines when you see him idling around the screen is "Hey Underlord! <friendly>"

Or how one campaign missions:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Is there really just to teach you about how Necromancers and necromancy work. But the mission itself really delivered. You start with 4 Necromancers and no Dungeon Heart, and just wander around the Tomb of the Empire raising ghouls out of different reliquaries and slaying Tomb Guardians. Fairly simple. I always hated these missions when Warcraft 3 started doing the "action" missions, because it felt like a stupid, easy distraction from the meat of the game.

No, what made the whole mission was this: the side objective. Desecrate the tombs of 7 of the Empire's greatest heroes. And by "desecrate", they mean "raise them up against their will as wraiths and make them fight for you." Each hero either has like a narrative background blurb told by the Narrator, or another voiced character calling you, the Underlord, a son of bitch. It's not that mechanically the entire level was anything to write home about.....but it just worked with the theme and then enhanced it. The voice acting is good (if a little hammy), consistent (mostly) and extensive. I was happy to clear that whole level despite not really needing to, because I was like....."Yeah, I'm the Underlord and I'm going to rez all your heroes as wraiths, who will hate me every second of their existence but do exactly what I tell them, while slaying all your Tomb Guardians and Priestesses, desecrating the corpse of your Emperor and then....you know what? I'm just going to leave them all down here with orders to kill anyone that shows up, for the rest of eternity. Fuck y'all, Underlord out. *mic drop*

The game seems to understand both villainy and fun. Like Evil Genius did. WftO looks and sounds just a little sillier than I'd prefer but I think I'm a fan now.

[94dima94]

Would you say that the game is now good enough to buy it? I never really payed attention to it because I was constantly hearing

"bugs bugs bugs bugs bugs bugs bugs bugs"

and nothing else every time I would check reviews and posts.

[nenjin]

I think it's pretty solid now. Like I said, I still experienced both a crash and what may be some broken "quest" triggers on Mission 9, but those are the only problems I've seen so far, and reading forums it's not a consistent bug.

So yeah, I'd say it's both stable and featured enough now to buy in good conscience.

[94dima94]

Thanks! This goes on my list then!

[martinuzz]

There was a nice update this week, adding a new survival mode. It features 6 dungeons to defend from endless assaults from various lanes, and some new monster subtypes.

The topic title should really be changed. The devs worked really hard to squash bugs and make the game replayable and enjoyable.

[Aklyon]

PM the op then?