April 2019
at April 14, 2019 0


YOU CAN ONLY CHANGE TEAMS ONCE PER YEAR, BUT HEY, IT’S SOMETHING.
Pokemon Go will finally add the ability to change your team in an update coming next week, developer Niantic announced. You’ll be able to purchase a Team Medallion for 1,000 Pokecoins (which can be earned for free or purchased with about $10 of real money) from the shop which you can use to hop between Team Instinct, Team Mystic, or Team Valor. The catch is that you can only use a medallion once, and not only that, you can only buy one medallion per year – as in, every 365 actual days.
It’ll be interesting to see how this update affects overall team composition. For as long as I can remember, Team Valor has been the most popular team, with Team Mystic slightly edging out Team Instinct.I still remember all the crap I got when I unwittingly joined Mystic after all my friends joined Valor. Not that I’m bitter or anything; Articuno is still the bird for me. It’s nice to have the option though, and I’m sure plenty of players are looking for a change of pace.


Read more »

at April 13, 2019 0




Late last year, Larian – the Belgian
developer behind the Divinity series –
said it was moving on to “new stuff”
after the success of our 2017 Game of the
Year, Divinity: Original Sin 2. And now we know what that project is – an RPG-infused turn-based tactics game called Divinity: Fallen Heroes which continues the story of Original Sin 2.
The focus in this gamewill be on
squad-based strategic combat, but it’ll
retain some of the role-playing elements
that define the Divinity games, namely
talking to people, character relationships,
customisation, and choices that alter the
course of the story. For many Divinity fans
this will be a surprising change of
direction, even though Larian has made
some strategy games in the past. I talked
to the studio’s founder, Swen Vincke,
about what we can expect from the
upcoming Fallen Heroes.
“We’re huge fans of tactics games,” he
says. “Into the Breach was one of our
favourite games of last year. When we
were making Original Sin 2 we had a lot of
discussions about things that we could
change in the combat, but we didn’t have
time. So we thought, what if we make a
tactics game?
“But in our game, story will define
everything that happens in the missions,
and everything that happens in the
missions will define the story. And from
this, Fallen Heroes was born.”
Set a few years after Original Sin 2,
Fallen Heroes sees the return of Lucian
the Divine, who tasks you, a commander,
with arresting the half-demon Malady.
“She has stolen powerful doomsday
weapons from the Divine Order, and
they’re afraid she’ll use them in a fit of
anger,” says Vincke. “But things are not
what they seem.”
“It is a story in its own right,” he adds
when I ask if being familiar with the series
is a requirement to enjoy Fallen Heroes.
“People who haven’t played Divinity will be
able to enjoy it. But we really wanted to
continue with the characters we’d
developed in Original Sin 2. We like them,
fans like them. Fans will love that you can
now control Malady in battle. If you played
Original Sin 2 it’ll feel like coming home.
But if you haven’t, you’ll meet a whole
bunch of interesting characters.”

BRIEF ENCOUNTER

Larian is aiming for each hand-crafted
mission in Fallen Heroes to be around
20-30 minutes long, but there’ll be some
downtime as well. “Between missions
you’re aboard the Lady Vengeance and
here you’ll meet the heroes from Original
Sin 2, as well as some new characters,”
says Vincke. “You’ll talk to them and make
choices that will define what happens in
the missions, and what missions you’ll be
able to access. There’s real choice here.
You can also upgrade technology, unlock
new heroes, and buy consumables to take
into missions.
“You have multiple rooms, and in these
rooms different characters will appear
depending on what’s happening in the
story. You can interact with them using
the conversation system from Original Sin
2. Some characters can even leave you if
they don’t agree with what you’re doing.
They may also join you in combat, bringing
unique abilities with them, depending on
choices you make in the story.”
I ask Vincke to explain how combat in
Fallen Heroes compares to Original Sin 2.
“The changes are different enough that
it’s going to feel fresh. On the other hand
it’s familiar enough that you’ll understand
what your tactical opportunities are.
“You’ll have to adapt your thinking a
little bit. The biggest change is that it’s
now squad-based. We have around 200
skills and over 30 unit types, and that
creates a lot of combinations and
possibilities on the battlefield.”
Larian is alsomaking no bones about
the fact thatFallenHeroes will be, by
design, a challenging game. Like the
Infinity EngineRPGs that inspired the
Original Sin series, you’ll need tomake
intelligent use of your abilities and
second-guess the AI to survive a fight.
“Frankly, the game has been designed to
be quite difficult,” says Vincke. “You’ll
often be left in situationswith littleHP and
only a fewunits left, so it’s quite intense.
Even I sufferwhen I play it, and that’s on
the normal difficulty setting. You can lower
it, of course. I should say that.”
For fans ofOriginal Sin 2, the chance to
hang outwith the Red Prince, Ifan,
Beast, and the rest of the gangwill be
hard to resist, even if it’s not in the form
of a typical RPG. “Narratively, it feels
really good to see these heroes back,”
says Vincke. “But this isn’t amassive
world you’re going to go out and explore.
There are setmissions, and each has its
own objectives.Butwe have tried to
maintain the diversity you find in our
RPGs.We neverwant you to do the
same thing twice.”
FallenHeroes likelywon’t be as long as
the gargantuanOriginal Sin 2, but Larian is
aiming for a lot of replay value. The path
each player takes through the gamewill
be different depending on choicesmade,
the ordermissions arecompleted in, and
so on. “The critical path through the game
is 22 out of 60missions,which gives you
an idea of howmany permutations there
are,” says Vincke. “But it ismore
contained,with a clearer structure of
acts. I thinkwe’re offering a higher level of
freedomhere than you’ll find in other
tactics games.”

Dramatic entrance

Larian is also aiming for a feeling of drama
in its battles. “It’s a lot more cinematic
than Original Sin 2 was,” says Vincke.
“When you start a mission the camera will
move around and show you the action.
One of the decisions you have to make is
when you find a city under attack by a
group called the Bloodless.
“You decide whether you’re going to
relieve Lucian, which you should be, or
save a bunch of people stuck on the
harbour trying to escape. If you help
Lucian, the camera will show you the city
under siege. People falling off buildings,
explosions everywhere, characters yelling
at each other. It sets the mood.”

Read more »

at April 13, 2019 0




           Picking a faction in a 4X game usually

requires a lot of consideration. But this
time I didn’t even have to think about it.
My options were restricted to Space
Dwarves, Space Bugs, Space Americans or a group of stoic warrior women with an environmentalist streak who ride laser-packing dinosaurs. Was there really any choice?

The Amazons are clearly the best, but I’m
probably not giving the rest a fair shake.
Every faction has unique units, techs and
a playstyle that makes them all tempting.
The insectoid Kir’Ko, for instance, have a
penchant for psychic trickery, taking over
minds during the turn-based tactical
battles. But – laser dinosaurs!
My army of nature-loving warriors was
led by Sappho Tori, a premade character
that I tweaked only a little bit, providing
her a dinosaur mount straight away.
Named characters like Sappho are special
heroic units that lead armies, annex
territory and influence battles with
powerful abilities. When they level up, new
skills can be unlocked, letting you change
them into a legendary sniper or giving
them the ability to drive a huge tank.
Before I could send out this mighty
army of Amazons and stampeding
dinosaurs, I still had one more factiondefining decision to make: what secret
technology was I going to pick? These
special projects dole out flashy abilities
that can be used in combat and on the
map, as well as giving you a new path to
victory by letting you construct a
doomsday weapon. I went with the
biological nightmare that is the
xenoplague, which, I would quickly
discover, is really gross.
In Planetfall, years of isolation have
ended and the various human, posthuman

and alien factions of the universe
are once again travelling across space,
settling on forgotten worlds and
competing over territory. Despite the
stellar setting, Planetfall is not a space 4X,
as each game takes place on a single,
randomly generated world. Sappho and
her pals landed in an appropriately green
sector of the planet, surrounded by flora.
The map is a real treat. It’s a randomlygenerated
jigsaw full of sectors with meandering borders and special traits.
The result, at least using the default map
settings, is a world that’s got diversions
and shiny distractions at every turn,
egging you on to explore further, but still
manages to look coherent. Within a short
march from my colony, I found a mighty
river of magma, a dead city spread out
across an entire sector and even a
civilisation of intelligent fungi.
It didn’t take me long to get into
trouble. As well as the other factions to
contend with, marauding aliens wander
the map in search of fights. Like any good
tourist, I was heading over to the
aforementioned river of magma to soak in
the sights, but I was waylaid by a group of
angry plants before I could get there.

EXPLOIT WEAKNESSES


Fights take place on a separate tactical

map informed by the sector you’re in, so I
found myself in a dense jungle – the
enemy’s home turf. Age of Wonders 3’s
tactical maps were more like conventional
Medieval battlefields, broad and flat, but
Planetfall’s are much more elaborate and
put a greater emphasis on cover and line
of sight. There’s still more than a hint of
the older games’ combat systems, but the
sci-fi conceit and abundance of firearms
means that, at times, it’s equally evocative
of squad-based tactics games like XCOM,
though fights are much shorter.
Even with dinosaurs, it pays to take a
step back and assess the enemy. I
absolutely did not do that, but it’s still a
great idea. Enemies have various
resistances and weaknesses, all handy

things to know if you’re planning on killing
them. Quite a few of my units had more
than one ability, thankfully, giving my army
a bit of flexibility straight away. If an enemy
was weak against melee attacks, I could
send my pterodactyl in with its claws. If
they were weak against fire, it could shoot
them with lasers instead.
Operations really saved my bacon.
These replace Age of Wonders 3’s spells
and function pretty similarly. You research
new operations and then cast them in
battle or on the campaign map, buffing
units and colonies while harming enemies.
I was rather partial to the good old orbital
laser, but my alien plague came in pretty
handy, too. It poisons enemies and
spawns a horrible little parasite who can
join your army after the battle. In only a
handful of turns, I already had several fun
super weapons to play around with.
For reaching the magma river and
surviving a few battles – just – I rewarded
my army with an upgrade. Every unit can
be augmented with mods, giving them
new characteristics and abilities, like a
jetpack that makes the unit more mobile
in combat. Thanks to the xenoplague
secret technology, I was able to research
plague pods, giving my units the ability to
lob toxic projectiles at enemies.
Leaders can be enhanced even more
with weapons, gear and mounts. For my
basic rangers, it was an obvious upgrade,
but the mod system appears to be as
much about specialising, not just making
your units better.
Planetfall seems to have hit the sweet
spot when it comes to unit customisation.
Instead of making lots of tiny, incremental
tweaks, you’re adding a small number of
mods that can significantly change the
unit. It’s hard to get excited about a two
per cent damage boost, but the ability to
fly and a new weapon with lots of handy
effects? That’s a bit more exciting.
As well as exploring, I was expanding
my borders. Expansion in Planetfall is
methodical, and instead of growing your
borders through influence or culture, you
annex sectors, specialising them for
things like industry and agriculture and
then exploiting what you find there via
your colony. A higher population and
additional colonies let you control more

sectors and increase your reach. With the
Amazon empire growing, it was inevitable
that I’d bump into one of the other factions
that had made the world its home.
I’d already met the Growth, a
plant-based NPC faction. Marauding
plants might have beaten me up a few
times, but the Growth was actually very
friendly. NPC factions are indigenous and
aren’t competing in the 4X competition.
You can wipe them out if you’re feeling
particularly cruel, but since the Amazons
seemed pretty in tune with nature, I opted
to help them instead.
NPC factions dole out quests,
rewarding you with resources and favour.
The latter fuels diplomacy and
can be spent on demands, like asking an
NPC faction to leave a sector so you can
take it over, or buying unique units and
mods. In the Growth’s fungal city, I
purchased some bees, as you do.
This way you’re not locked into your
faction’s army. Through diplomacy and
trade, you can field whatever you want.
And if you prefer to fight, you can always
go and conquer a settlement and use their
buildings to make new troops, helpfully
shoring up any gaps in your own faction’s
roster. I only bought those bees, however,
and while they were very good bees, they
weren’t exactly game-changers. Good
mascots, though.

TALK IT OUT


Diplomacy between playable factions is

pretty familiar. You make pacts, deals and
trade via a diplomacy screen. They’re a
chatty bunch, always eager to give you a
call with an update on your relationship
status. If only this happened in reality.
“Hey mate, just wanted to let you know
that we’re still work acquaintances.”
Given there were also wandering packs
of NPC aliens looking for a fight, I didn’t
fancy adding a war on top of that, so our
relationships stayed pretty friendly. With
more time and colliding borders, I’m sure
that would have changed. I encountered a
few visual bugs, and parts of the UI are
sorely lacking clarity, but Age of Wonders:
Planetfall otherwise makes a very good
first impression. Like its predecessor, a lot
of the systems serve to prop up the
engaging tactical brawls, but it’s a broader
4X with more attention given to the
empire management and diplomatic side
of things. Notably, this doesn’t seem to
have a negative effect on the pace, at least
in the early stage of the game, which
moves along briskly despite all the

additional distractions.
Read more »
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)