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Oct. 19th, 2021 07:38 amSome thoughts on Ashes of Gods:
So many proper nouns. Why does the Church of Divine Wrath hate the Church of Divine Retribution? Hopper and the Reapers are both Umbra, but what’s an Umbra? Am I really supposed to keep track of which countries invaded and occupied other countries?
No manual save, no notification popup for autosave. It’s hard to tell when it’s safe to quit.
The “your team moves once, the enemy team moves once“ thing is stolen from The Banner Saga, and it’s still annoying here. Better not finish off the enemy minions before you fight the boss who does massive damage every time he gets to move! Still, being able to choose who moves next is better than whatever The Banner Saga was doing.
If you target the enemy’s energy while their energy is 0, they take double health damage instead. So you can drop each enemy’s energy to stop them from using their worst attacks, then finish them off quickly before the survivors get too many turns. This is a godsend and I love it.
A lot of your characters raise DEF by 3 once every other turn. I’ve see regular enemies give themselves 10 DEF in one turn. That’s just unfair.
Also, way too many enemies have a passive where their attack goes up every time their buddies go down. I’ve seen powered-up regular enemies one-shot my spearmen.
Clerics get +1 attack until the end of combat every time they heal. This doesn’t mean too much for your clerics if you’re keeping everyone conscious, since they won’t get that many individual turns. But if you’re systematically dismantling the enemy team, and you leave the clerics for last because their attack starts out so low, you’re going to get beaten senseless with a staff.
Your mage is surprisingly useless. The attack buff doesn’t come up much unless your unbuffed characters are dropping, he has no way to directly target HP, and energy drain doesn’t matter that much when enemies can just target his HP instead.
Overheal is unlimited and lasts until the end of combat. A good first move is to have a cleric overheal your weakest unit before anyone engages.
Assassins, archers, and warriors are all great. Spearmen would be great if the enemy didn’t priority target them. (20 damage off the base spear attack is crazy when your warriors are doing 7.)
Unlike The Banner Saga, you get leaked experience, so you’re not screwed if one of your regulars dies. And you don’t have to spend your food equivalent every time you level up. And optional fights often drop several days worth of food equivalent as a reward for risking injury. Look, The Banner Saga hates you and wants you dead.
I love the contrast between the three different groups you play. Hopper is the same thing the Reapers are, so he has no combat allies and needs no combat allies. He defaults to kind and selfless, and his resource management is more reasonable than it looks. Pheng solos a Reaper in his first fight, but he’s squishy and does better with support. He only cares about the mission, and you have to go out of your way to get him to not just slaughter people who get in his way. He has decent resources. Thorn can be kind or cruel, is frequently outclassed, and has very little resources to spare.
Thorn can apparently die? No idea what that does to his part of the story.
One mention of the Enses having “metal birds,” and I already predict that they’re post-apocalyptic.
Honestly, I’m having more fun with this than with Wrath of the Righteous at this point.
So many proper nouns. Why does the Church of Divine Wrath hate the Church of Divine Retribution? Hopper and the Reapers are both Umbra, but what’s an Umbra? Am I really supposed to keep track of which countries invaded and occupied other countries?
No manual save, no notification popup for autosave. It’s hard to tell when it’s safe to quit.
The “your team moves once, the enemy team moves once“ thing is stolen from The Banner Saga, and it’s still annoying here. Better not finish off the enemy minions before you fight the boss who does massive damage every time he gets to move! Still, being able to choose who moves next is better than whatever The Banner Saga was doing.
If you target the enemy’s energy while their energy is 0, they take double health damage instead. So you can drop each enemy’s energy to stop them from using their worst attacks, then finish them off quickly before the survivors get too many turns. This is a godsend and I love it.
A lot of your characters raise DEF by 3 once every other turn. I’ve see regular enemies give themselves 10 DEF in one turn. That’s just unfair.
Also, way too many enemies have a passive where their attack goes up every time their buddies go down. I’ve seen powered-up regular enemies one-shot my spearmen.
Clerics get +1 attack until the end of combat every time they heal. This doesn’t mean too much for your clerics if you’re keeping everyone conscious, since they won’t get that many individual turns. But if you’re systematically dismantling the enemy team, and you leave the clerics for last because their attack starts out so low, you’re going to get beaten senseless with a staff.
Your mage is surprisingly useless. The attack buff doesn’t come up much unless your unbuffed characters are dropping, he has no way to directly target HP, and energy drain doesn’t matter that much when enemies can just target his HP instead.
Overheal is unlimited and lasts until the end of combat. A good first move is to have a cleric overheal your weakest unit before anyone engages.
Assassins, archers, and warriors are all great. Spearmen would be great if the enemy didn’t priority target them. (20 damage off the base spear attack is crazy when your warriors are doing 7.)
Unlike The Banner Saga, you get leaked experience, so you’re not screwed if one of your regulars dies. And you don’t have to spend your food equivalent every time you level up. And optional fights often drop several days worth of food equivalent as a reward for risking injury. Look, The Banner Saga hates you and wants you dead.
I love the contrast between the three different groups you play. Hopper is the same thing the Reapers are, so he has no combat allies and needs no combat allies. He defaults to kind and selfless, and his resource management is more reasonable than it looks. Pheng solos a Reaper in his first fight, but he’s squishy and does better with support. He only cares about the mission, and you have to go out of your way to get him to not just slaughter people who get in his way. He has decent resources. Thorn can be kind or cruel, is frequently outclassed, and has very little resources to spare.
Thorn can apparently die? No idea what that does to his part of the story.
One mention of the Enses having “metal birds,” and I already predict that they’re post-apocalyptic.
Honestly, I’m having more fun with this than with Wrath of the Righteous at this point.
