Lionheart demo now available

[Grumbold]

Yeah I've just finished the demo and I'm pretty disappointed. Its late so I won't make a big post now but lets just say I'm not expecting it to be scoring >80% scores if the real game is like the demo.

[Imran Siddiqui]

Grumbold, I think the demo was supposed to be VERRY combat heavy... but the combat sucked.

There is supposed to be a ton more dialog in the game. Hopefully!!

[Sarxis]

Originally posted by Lemmy
I really like the way they've implemented the skills, there are 3 main groups: Fighting, Thieving and Magic, and all groups have about the same amount of skills, all of them with a very distinct use.

Morrowind rip-off.

Of course, who knows where Bethesda got it from; its actually a pretty standard way to group fantasy skills.

[Lemmy]

Morrowind rip-off.

Of course, who knows where Bethesda got it from; its actually a pretty standard way to group fantasy skills.

Heh, maybe, but IIRC the Thieving and Magic groups in Morrowing also included combat skills, so you only need to specialize in one group if you wanted to a thief for example.

Here it seems that you need at least 1 combat skill, or heavily invest in some destructive magic.

[Grumbold]

- The screen is 800 x 600 only, which is a pity because...

- The interface takes up too much of the game screen. While you can toggle it off, I find the quick slots and text window invaluable.

- The main character is poorly animated. Sneaking at the slowest pace through to the fastest run is all donw with one walk animation that just looks terrible at running pace.

- Despite being large, some of the interface buttons are very small and badly placed. Quicksave and quickload pixels apart is just asking for grief!

- The chat window is not very user friendly. It would be better if it was centre screen while you engaged in dialogue.

- Point allocation on levelling up is very unforgiving. There is no way I could find to back out if you put a point in the wrong place.

- There are lots of options in combat, with fast, normal or calculated swings at various body locations, but absolutely no feedback on what your chances of hitting actually are. The luck factor was high too so it seemed easier to just wade in and quicksave/quickload until you got a good result than fanny around with the combat options. Criticals seem limited to dishing out knockback and extra damage, at least that was the only obvious result.

- The same sort of thing applies to lockpicking. The only way to guage the difficulty of a lock is to quicksave, try to open it three times then quickload. Repeat about 10 times and if you have failed you can be fairly sure you've got no chance of opening it. A red/amber/green traffic light to show you if there was any point in even trying would save a lot of frustration.

- your animal companion in the demo is a pain in the bum. Because it meanders around you on a wide leash it can easily aggro more monsters than you want at the worst possible moment. It doesn't seem to care if you're sneaking or stationary either. Hopefully humanoid companions aren't as moronic.

- Combat against anything except the slowest monsters is going to be melee before you can fire off an arrow unless you're on the ball. Since you cant target while paused, firing off spells and melee swings in succession is a pain and you can easily click different enemies by mistake.

- Gauntlets and armbands use the same armour slot. One of my pet hates.

None of this stuff makes Lionheart a terrible game, but it does hint at less than first class production values. I just hope that they consider tweaking some of the bits that could go a long way to giving it more polish and playability. While I prefer TB games I'm not averse to RT combat, in fact I think Divine Divinity does it very well. It just doesn't fit with the level of complexity and difficulty that seems to be in Lionheart.

A speed slider, targetting when paused and hopefully some feedback on your success chances when opting for a calculated head shot vs a wild swing at the legs of an ogre would really help, as would an attempt to give at least the main character some more variation in their movement animation. If it arrives in the same state as the demo I don't expect high review scores even if the plotline is really strong.

[Victor Galis]

Well from what I've heard here, it looks like the game's not even worth a download then. Back to EV Nova it is

[Grumbold]

I don't think the demo is worth a download because if it fairly represents the game then Lionheart has problems. If the demo cut so much stuff to make it fit in 150mb that it is not a fair representation, then you don't want it to colour your opinion if reviews say the real thing is better

[General Ludd]

I tried the full version and was not impressed. The game starts the same as the demo, except that you get teleported (by a character) to Barcelona imediately after leaving the jail. The first little mini quest I find in barcelona has me rescuing a merchants daughter from bandits, who are keeping her ransom inside his house. Turns out that his house is a sprawling dungeon-like (jail cells and all) labrynth which actually seems to be larger then the entire gate district of Barcelona Inside, there is a varitable army of bandits along with a bunch of unexplainable poison-spitting monsters. There is not even any dialouge with the bandits - there's one charging at you as soon as you enter the door without a word spoken.

I stoped playing the game before finishing that quest... maybe I'm making an unfair or premature judgment, but the game seems like crap to me.

[Grumbold]

All the reviews so far score it pretty low (i.e. 70% or so). I'm waiting until it hits the budget shelf, which doesn't seem like its going to take long.

[General Ludd]

Personally, I had more fun playing the demo of Richochet (a block-breaking paddle game) that came with Lionheart then the game itself.

[DrSpike]

Originally posted by Osweld
Personally, I had more fun playing the demo of Richochet (a block-breaking paddle game) that came with Lionheart then the game itself.

Not a ringing endorsement.

It never ceases to amaze me how few games I've spent more time on that 'silly' games like minesweeper and freecell.