Post by Crumpy Six on Feb 3, 2016 20:38:01 GMT
I played through Godus Wars to the end of what has currently been implemented (as of 3rd Feb 2016). Here's some commentary on it. The playthrough finishes on page 3 of this thread.
Launch
Started up and picked Godus Wars.
Straight off, it looks pretty good. It's full-screen so it no longer feels like a mobile app. I don't really like seeing the faces of the whole 22Cans team on a banner across the front page (or 'team page' as it seems to be referred to in the Settings menu) but that's just a personal thing.
Information about what's going on and what to do next appears in an awkwardly-titled 'Explanation' box as I progress through the screens. I am instructed to choose a deity, and I pick Fearos. I am immediately pitched against an opponent, Rowena Ravenclaw. Oh sorry, I mean 'Morrigan'. A globe appears before me, which I can spin by clicking and dragging. When I do so, little people start flying around the screen. I think this may be supposed to look like they have flown off the planet as a result of me spinning the globe, but the execution makes it seem more like a weird graphical error.
The globe-spinning is actually kind of irritating. It doesn't stop for ages and you can't stop it by clicking and holding or anything as intuitive as that. Also, while it appears you can select any continent to fight on, there's only one ("Mortas" in this case) that is a valid selection. If you start merrily spinning the globe, you will then need to rove around it spinning in all different directions until you rediscover the one you're actually allowed to play.
Starting the game
So, 'next'. Another clunky 'Explanation' appears.
To attack, lands must first be unlocked with keys. Click on a land to see details about its unlock cost and rewards. New lands you can unlock will flash white'
Needing keys to unlock lands feels like an unnecessary level of abstraction but at least we've had no mention of gems, or buying keys with in-game transactions.
Next step. I am presented with a map. I can see from the information on the left of the screen that I start with 1 key and 2 cards. If I click the flashing white part of the map I can see it requires 1 key to unlock, and the reward will be a card and another key. This is all fairly straight-forward.
I click 'unlock' and some new info appears. This bit of land is called "Graintrick Bluff". The information states that I have 0 followers and 450 belief. The people of Graintrick Bluff have 0 followers and 0 belief. I can now click 'attack'. I don't know what the hell kind of a war this is going to be, with my 0 followers pitted against their 0 followers. Anyway. Attack.
Preparing for the first battle
The next screen has a big verbose paragraph in the Explanation box. My belief/follower numbers are to the left, the opponent's is to the right (re-asserting we have 0 followers each). I'm told I can choose up to 4 cards to take into battle. I'm instructed to drag and drop the cards into the blue slots on the left. What blue slots? Oh wait, I see. The blue slots, on the blue background. I only have 2 cards right now (attack+2 and increased warband sprog time) so I pick them both.
There are little animated people wandering around the bottom of this screen. I don't know why they're there or they're for. If I click them they disappear.
As instructed by the Explanation, I now click the 'To Battle' button at the top of the screen. Now a weird thing like a fruit machine pops up and says it's selecting "game rules". After spinning for a bit, it settles on two rules (I guess these are randomised for each time you play?). Anyway, the ones I land on are "Double belief from abodes" and "Half belief from abodes". Marvellous. Immediately following this, Godus launches. [Update: I think possibly it only selects one random rule? But the graphics make it look like two were selected.. I'm not really sure]
Entering the first battle: Graintrick Bluff
Another verbose Explanation pops up to explain that I now have to crush my opponent through sculpting the battlefield and nurturing my followers. Confusingly, my screen starts hovering over a couple of buildings and a field, which I assume are my own, but it turns out this is the 'enemy village' (I don't know why I would wish to conquer this pitiful excuse for a settlement). Scrolling down, I find my own settlement, which is a silo of belief and a single building: my Citadel. Clicking it, I am given the choice to create a band of archers (which I do). As soon as it's ready I get huge boxes of text pop up saying "Your Warband is ready! Click their banner at the top of the screen or the Warband itself to select them.". This text appears in both places (banner and warband) and flashes at me. I'd forgotten how much 22Cans like their redundant, flashing notifications.
Serious constructive feedback for 22Cans: this text does not need to appear in both places. The screen is cluttered enough. Also, edit your damn text. It needs to be more concise. Everywhere.
I select my warband an have them move around by clicking the right mouse button. I was surprised not to be immediately provided instructions on how to do this, given 22Cans' handholding approach to every other step of this tutorial, but then I realised they actually have provided instructions for this, it's just that this particular flashing, poorly-aligned notification has appeared slightly off-screen and is partly concealed by the HUD. Text alignment, that's another thing. The text is not centrally aligned in any of the boxes. It creates a bit of a class-project-powerpoint-presentation feel.
The warband pathfinding seems to be ok, but they move like a swarm of ants. They regroup into formation once they arrive at their destination but they look like a panicking riot until they get there.
I commence firing arrows at this helpless, harmless village and reap a prompt victory. My 0 follows turned out to be a warband. The enemy's 0 followers turned out to be a few innocent people living in abodes. Whatever. It's the tutorial, I guess. Onwards.
Victory screen and next battle
Following my victory I unlock a new card, Speed +2. Cards were unnecessary in my last 'battle' but I'm sure they'll come in handy later. We're back at the map on the Godus Wars screen, with the next land to be conquered flashing white. A notification on this land says "Well done. Now, let's move on to a new battle. Click here!" This is exactly what I mean by text needing to be edited down, or at least not appearing in massive clunky text boxes like this.
My next battle is at Badgerhook Lake. I now have 10 followers, versus 0.
Second battle
We're back in classic Godus territory at this point, flattening land so our followers (or 'builders' as that is what they actually are) can put down plots and make new buildings. I'm instructed to flatten out a patch of land so they can build a citadel.
Immediately noticeable new feature: belief auto-collect! Fucking finally.
Seconds after commencing this map, a flashing text notification instructs me to "click on the Citadel card to activate your Citadel squishing power". The citadel card that has now appeared on the left is called "Build Citadel" which doesn't sound very squishy. Ah, I see. The 'squishing' is what is required to build this thing. You draw a circle and every abode within the circle gets rammed together to create the citadel. Okay. Doing this leaves the surrounding area empty and full of housing plots, which my followers promptly start building.
I train a warband. Scanning to the right of this map, I can see that my opponent already has a small warband. Unlike the previous map, my opponent also has a belief silo. Just as I'm done noticing this ALL BY MYSELF, the predictable flashing-text-box appears (kinda like Clippy from days of yore) to point this out to me and to let me know I might want to consider attacking this enemy warband. I try using a card this time; my new Attack+2 card. I make mincemeat of the enemy.
I'm now told to conquer the enemy belief silo. In a deviation from what we know of Godus, but reminiscent of the far superior Black and White, my warband captures the belief silo by performing some kind of dance/worship of it. This is kind of weird. My own followers do not display any worshipping behaviour, or indeed make any acknowledgement of me whatsoever as a god. This is the first god-like thing I've seen in Godus since it was first delivered. It's good. Onwards to the next battle.
Third battle
On this map, my opponent is no longer passive and I'm finally left on my own to build my citadel and have my followers build some abodes. There is no area of influence (yet) which is nice, and I can sculpt anywhere. Sculpting higher ground still costs belief, which is less good. But whatever.
I make my warband and start attacking the enemy buildings. This is maybe a small thing, but I'm a little disappointed that the basic unit here is an archer. Normally the basic RTS unit is a melee soldier. I guess you can probably unlock other units later in the game.
Anyway, as I begin attacking the enemy, I encounter a few GUI/control frustrations. I decide to buff my warband with attack+2 again. They are in the middle of a battle, and straight after applying the buff I want to switch targets, but I still have my God Card selected. I right-click to deselect it (standard RTS controls, in my experience) but the game immediately interprets this as a movement instruction to my warband, sending them charging across the screen in the wrong direction. Meanwhile, I still have the card card selected! To deselect the card I have to mouseover the card icon on the HUD and left-click. I imagine this is because the idea is that during battles, you'll want to keep your god-power selected whilst giving instructions to your troops and maybe applying the same buff to multiple warbands. I would probably get used to it, but it feels unintuitive.
This battle ends fairly promptly. Onwards.
Fourth battle
Now that I've done the early 'tutorial' levels, I am given an option of which land I choose to conquer next (my present territory borders on 4 different options). Selecting each in turn, it appears I actually only have enough keys to unlock 2 of them. I choose the southern land, which requires 2 keys to unlock. I forgot to mention that I've been winning keys on each of my previous battles, and have 2 in my reserve by now.
This land looks a lot more interesting. My enemy has 8 warbands already, and appears to be pretty tough. I notice on this level I can finally build bigger abodes: if I make a bigger space on higher ground, a bigger plot appears. I like that.
My first warband gets pasted by the enemy. At this point I realise I can squish my citadels together with the neighbouring abodes (using "Build Citadel") to make massive citadels, which in turn create bigger warbands. So that's handy. Each warband is given a number of stars, which I think is something to do with experience points.
Massive though my citadel now is, it can still only train archers. My next warband does a little better and wins the fight. It's reduced to 8 men but has 5 experience stars - nice. I train up a new warband and would like to combine them somehow, and maybe level out the experience across both bands, but I can't see how to do this.
Aside: I've noticed there are some weird sound-effects in the game. Something in my settlement occasionally makes a comical sproinging sound. The arrows from my warband make a weird wet squeaking noise. Each battle is predeeded by some quirky text about what the natives of the land are like (kind of reminds me of how the maps on Dungeon Keeper were described by the narrator before you started each level). But then the warbands have serious-sounding war cries and the music is more like a classic RTS. It's a little inconsistent in whether it wants to set a serious or comedic tone.
I also noticed that while hitting Escape brings up the menu, it doesn't actually pause the game. That's a small thing. I don't actually know how to pause this game. Anyway, back to the game.
I use my more experienced warband to kill the enemy army, and my guys begin worshipping the enemy belief silo in an attempt to take it over. Half-way through, the enemy citadel (right next door) spits out a new warband. Here's where the controls get frustrating again: at this point in time, I have the Attack+2 card selected (trying to conduct a fight whilst the card is selected, which seems to be how the battles should be fought). I right-click the enemy warband to attack them, then attempt to select my other warband from the top banner to bring them in as backup. Result: the god power is cast on the secondary warband, but it is not selected. This means my backup army is standing stupidly on the other side of the hill, with an expensive buff timer counting down, paying no attention to me.
I bring in my next warband (which has like 30 guys by now, since I pimped my citadel). Easily destroy the enemy warband, destroy the enemy citadel and take their town centre. Done. That's enough for now.
Impressions
My first impression is that this feels a lot like Godus 1.4, and that's a good thing. There is no dicking around with gems, wheat or ore. All of which massively ruined the last iteration of Godus for me.
Politics and cynicism aside, it makes no sense to me that this is a separate game to core Godus. It feels like 22Cans have backtracked to 1.4 then moved forward in a completely different direction. The result in an unfinished, unpolished but playable game. Why it needs to exist alongside the other version of Godus is a mystery. I suppose they didn't want to scrap all that work. But now we've got two unfinished, poorly executed games which don't deliver on their promises.
This is not a good RTS. It's simplistic. The writing is poor and needs to be aggressively edited. The controls suck, and become clumsy even in the most trivial battle situations. But, I will say this much: it is much better than core Godus.
Launch
Started up and picked Godus Wars.
Straight off, it looks pretty good. It's full-screen so it no longer feels like a mobile app. I don't really like seeing the faces of the whole 22Cans team on a banner across the front page (or 'team page' as it seems to be referred to in the Settings menu) but that's just a personal thing.
Information about what's going on and what to do next appears in an awkwardly-titled 'Explanation' box as I progress through the screens. I am instructed to choose a deity, and I pick Fearos. I am immediately pitched against an opponent, Rowena Ravenclaw. Oh sorry, I mean 'Morrigan'. A globe appears before me, which I can spin by clicking and dragging. When I do so, little people start flying around the screen. I think this may be supposed to look like they have flown off the planet as a result of me spinning the globe, but the execution makes it seem more like a weird graphical error.
The globe-spinning is actually kind of irritating. It doesn't stop for ages and you can't stop it by clicking and holding or anything as intuitive as that. Also, while it appears you can select any continent to fight on, there's only one ("Mortas" in this case) that is a valid selection. If you start merrily spinning the globe, you will then need to rove around it spinning in all different directions until you rediscover the one you're actually allowed to play.
Starting the game
So, 'next'. Another clunky 'Explanation' appears.
To attack, lands must first be unlocked with keys. Click on a land to see details about its unlock cost and rewards. New lands you can unlock will flash white'
Needing keys to unlock lands feels like an unnecessary level of abstraction but at least we've had no mention of gems, or buying keys with in-game transactions.
Next step. I am presented with a map. I can see from the information on the left of the screen that I start with 1 key and 2 cards. If I click the flashing white part of the map I can see it requires 1 key to unlock, and the reward will be a card and another key. This is all fairly straight-forward.
I click 'unlock' and some new info appears. This bit of land is called "Graintrick Bluff". The information states that I have 0 followers and 450 belief. The people of Graintrick Bluff have 0 followers and 0 belief. I can now click 'attack'. I don't know what the hell kind of a war this is going to be, with my 0 followers pitted against their 0 followers. Anyway. Attack.
Preparing for the first battle
The next screen has a big verbose paragraph in the Explanation box. My belief/follower numbers are to the left, the opponent's is to the right (re-asserting we have 0 followers each). I'm told I can choose up to 4 cards to take into battle. I'm instructed to drag and drop the cards into the blue slots on the left. What blue slots? Oh wait, I see. The blue slots, on the blue background. I only have 2 cards right now (attack+2 and increased warband sprog time) so I pick them both.
There are little animated people wandering around the bottom of this screen. I don't know why they're there or they're for. If I click them they disappear.
As instructed by the Explanation, I now click the 'To Battle' button at the top of the screen. Now a weird thing like a fruit machine pops up and says it's selecting "game rules". After spinning for a bit, it settles on two rules (I guess these are randomised for each time you play?). Anyway, the ones I land on are "Double belief from abodes" and "Half belief from abodes". Marvellous. Immediately following this, Godus launches. [Update: I think possibly it only selects one random rule? But the graphics make it look like two were selected.. I'm not really sure]
Entering the first battle: Graintrick Bluff
Another verbose Explanation pops up to explain that I now have to crush my opponent through sculpting the battlefield and nurturing my followers. Confusingly, my screen starts hovering over a couple of buildings and a field, which I assume are my own, but it turns out this is the 'enemy village' (I don't know why I would wish to conquer this pitiful excuse for a settlement). Scrolling down, I find my own settlement, which is a silo of belief and a single building: my Citadel. Clicking it, I am given the choice to create a band of archers (which I do). As soon as it's ready I get huge boxes of text pop up saying "Your Warband is ready! Click their banner at the top of the screen or the Warband itself to select them.". This text appears in both places (banner and warband) and flashes at me. I'd forgotten how much 22Cans like their redundant, flashing notifications.
Serious constructive feedback for 22Cans: this text does not need to appear in both places. The screen is cluttered enough. Also, edit your damn text. It needs to be more concise. Everywhere.
I select my warband an have them move around by clicking the right mouse button. I was surprised not to be immediately provided instructions on how to do this, given 22Cans' handholding approach to every other step of this tutorial, but then I realised they actually have provided instructions for this, it's just that this particular flashing, poorly-aligned notification has appeared slightly off-screen and is partly concealed by the HUD. Text alignment, that's another thing. The text is not centrally aligned in any of the boxes. It creates a bit of a class-project-powerpoint-presentation feel.
The warband pathfinding seems to be ok, but they move like a swarm of ants. They regroup into formation once they arrive at their destination but they look like a panicking riot until they get there.
I commence firing arrows at this helpless, harmless village and reap a prompt victory. My 0 follows turned out to be a warband. The enemy's 0 followers turned out to be a few innocent people living in abodes. Whatever. It's the tutorial, I guess. Onwards.
Victory screen and next battle
Following my victory I unlock a new card, Speed +2. Cards were unnecessary in my last 'battle' but I'm sure they'll come in handy later. We're back at the map on the Godus Wars screen, with the next land to be conquered flashing white. A notification on this land says "Well done. Now, let's move on to a new battle. Click here!" This is exactly what I mean by text needing to be edited down, or at least not appearing in massive clunky text boxes like this.
My next battle is at Badgerhook Lake. I now have 10 followers, versus 0.
Second battle
We're back in classic Godus territory at this point, flattening land so our followers (or 'builders' as that is what they actually are) can put down plots and make new buildings. I'm instructed to flatten out a patch of land so they can build a citadel.
Immediately noticeable new feature: belief auto-collect! Fucking finally.
Seconds after commencing this map, a flashing text notification instructs me to "click on the Citadel card to activate your Citadel squishing power". The citadel card that has now appeared on the left is called "Build Citadel" which doesn't sound very squishy. Ah, I see. The 'squishing' is what is required to build this thing. You draw a circle and every abode within the circle gets rammed together to create the citadel. Okay. Doing this leaves the surrounding area empty and full of housing plots, which my followers promptly start building.
I train a warband. Scanning to the right of this map, I can see that my opponent already has a small warband. Unlike the previous map, my opponent also has a belief silo. Just as I'm done noticing this ALL BY MYSELF, the predictable flashing-text-box appears (kinda like Clippy from days of yore) to point this out to me and to let me know I might want to consider attacking this enemy warband. I try using a card this time; my new Attack+2 card. I make mincemeat of the enemy.
I'm now told to conquer the enemy belief silo. In a deviation from what we know of Godus, but reminiscent of the far superior Black and White, my warband captures the belief silo by performing some kind of dance/worship of it. This is kind of weird. My own followers do not display any worshipping behaviour, or indeed make any acknowledgement of me whatsoever as a god. This is the first god-like thing I've seen in Godus since it was first delivered. It's good. Onwards to the next battle.
Third battle
On this map, my opponent is no longer passive and I'm finally left on my own to build my citadel and have my followers build some abodes. There is no area of influence (yet) which is nice, and I can sculpt anywhere. Sculpting higher ground still costs belief, which is less good. But whatever.
I make my warband and start attacking the enemy buildings. This is maybe a small thing, but I'm a little disappointed that the basic unit here is an archer. Normally the basic RTS unit is a melee soldier. I guess you can probably unlock other units later in the game.
Anyway, as I begin attacking the enemy, I encounter a few GUI/control frustrations. I decide to buff my warband with attack+2 again. They are in the middle of a battle, and straight after applying the buff I want to switch targets, but I still have my God Card selected. I right-click to deselect it (standard RTS controls, in my experience) but the game immediately interprets this as a movement instruction to my warband, sending them charging across the screen in the wrong direction. Meanwhile, I still have the card card selected! To deselect the card I have to mouseover the card icon on the HUD and left-click. I imagine this is because the idea is that during battles, you'll want to keep your god-power selected whilst giving instructions to your troops and maybe applying the same buff to multiple warbands. I would probably get used to it, but it feels unintuitive.
This battle ends fairly promptly. Onwards.
Fourth battle
Now that I've done the early 'tutorial' levels, I am given an option of which land I choose to conquer next (my present territory borders on 4 different options). Selecting each in turn, it appears I actually only have enough keys to unlock 2 of them. I choose the southern land, which requires 2 keys to unlock. I forgot to mention that I've been winning keys on each of my previous battles, and have 2 in my reserve by now.
This land looks a lot more interesting. My enemy has 8 warbands already, and appears to be pretty tough. I notice on this level I can finally build bigger abodes: if I make a bigger space on higher ground, a bigger plot appears. I like that.
My first warband gets pasted by the enemy. At this point I realise I can squish my citadels together with the neighbouring abodes (using "Build Citadel") to make massive citadels, which in turn create bigger warbands. So that's handy. Each warband is given a number of stars, which I think is something to do with experience points.
Massive though my citadel now is, it can still only train archers. My next warband does a little better and wins the fight. It's reduced to 8 men but has 5 experience stars - nice. I train up a new warband and would like to combine them somehow, and maybe level out the experience across both bands, but I can't see how to do this.
Aside: I've noticed there are some weird sound-effects in the game. Something in my settlement occasionally makes a comical sproinging sound. The arrows from my warband make a weird wet squeaking noise. Each battle is predeeded by some quirky text about what the natives of the land are like (kind of reminds me of how the maps on Dungeon Keeper were described by the narrator before you started each level). But then the warbands have serious-sounding war cries and the music is more like a classic RTS. It's a little inconsistent in whether it wants to set a serious or comedic tone.
I also noticed that while hitting Escape brings up the menu, it doesn't actually pause the game. That's a small thing. I don't actually know how to pause this game. Anyway, back to the game.
I use my more experienced warband to kill the enemy army, and my guys begin worshipping the enemy belief silo in an attempt to take it over. Half-way through, the enemy citadel (right next door) spits out a new warband. Here's where the controls get frustrating again: at this point in time, I have the Attack+2 card selected (trying to conduct a fight whilst the card is selected, which seems to be how the battles should be fought). I right-click the enemy warband to attack them, then attempt to select my other warband from the top banner to bring them in as backup. Result: the god power is cast on the secondary warband, but it is not selected. This means my backup army is standing stupidly on the other side of the hill, with an expensive buff timer counting down, paying no attention to me.
I bring in my next warband (which has like 30 guys by now, since I pimped my citadel). Easily destroy the enemy warband, destroy the enemy citadel and take their town centre. Done. That's enough for now.
Impressions
My first impression is that this feels a lot like Godus 1.4, and that's a good thing. There is no dicking around with gems, wheat or ore. All of which massively ruined the last iteration of Godus for me.
Politics and cynicism aside, it makes no sense to me that this is a separate game to core Godus. It feels like 22Cans have backtracked to 1.4 then moved forward in a completely different direction. The result in an unfinished, unpolished but playable game. Why it needs to exist alongside the other version of Godus is a mystery. I suppose they didn't want to scrap all that work. But now we've got two unfinished, poorly executed games which don't deliver on their promises.
This is not a good RTS. It's simplistic. The writing is poor and needs to be aggressively edited. The controls suck, and become clumsy even in the most trivial battle situations. But, I will say this much: it is much better than core Godus.
