Continuation of a quality, little-known, old-school RPG. The glorious traditions of the past have been inherited and new features have been introduced.
The game is announced for platforms: Android, Windows.
The first game in the series left the most pleasant impressions, settled in the favorites, so the new project interested me. You can read about the previous game here.
This time our captain was brought to the archipelago, to new lands. There is no need to lead the guards anymore. All hands on deck, we’re assembling a team of thugs! And again you need to bring a huge number of enemies to life.
The story is told in large chunks of text in English.
The gameplay is a Dungeon Crawler with RPG elements, made in a retro style.
At the very beginning, when creating a game, you can seriously customize its properties. The most important of which are difficulty and perma-death mode. So the game combines the opportunity to play both a roguelike and a roguelike.
In addition, in the advanced settings we determine the size of the dungeons, the speed of gaining experience and the frequency of events that will occur in the dungeons.
Right from the start we are given to understand that this is a serious RPG. Initial parameter selections are very important. Determining the background, passive perks and stats of the hero.
The impact of each choice on the final result is tracked in the final table of parameters and, if necessary, at the creation stage you can easily redo your build. If you don’t like the hero during the game or want some new build, then you’ll have to create a new character.
Regarding the previous game, at this stage, we were given:
– Character portraits and the ability to add your own
– Probably built according to old formulas, but feels new and more detailed stat system with the ability to immediately improve them a little. In the last game they didn’t really chew on it, I took the perks and marched to win.
Then the game itself begins. We get to the city screen. There will be a short but detailed training on the question of which tabs are responsible for what.
The settlement has undergone dramatic changes. Design pictures have become more lively. The descriptive part with date, gold, etc. has not changed.
– Improvement window consul. This is compensated as the hero progresses, we receive improvements automatically.
– Garrison. In the last game, we were besieged by enemy forces and from time to time there were battles based on the “rock-paper-scissors” principle. Now they’re gone.
– Arena. From time to time, squads of enemies are released into the arena. If we defeat them, we will receive a reward. As a rule, enemies are stronger than a normal dungeon party, but weaker than a group with a mini-boss. The opportunity to fight occurs once every few game days. The frequency of the event is not clear, so it’s better to check every time we return from the dungeon.
– Pirate Crew Recruitment. These guys will give passive bonuses in dungeons or during sea battles. We have three cells in total for team members. There are a lot of types of pirates that can be hired; if desired, they can be fired to hire cooler filibusters.
The following points remained almost unchanged:
Tavern "Salty Rat" (free https://moneyplaycasino.co.uk/ translation). Here we replenish supplies, restore our shaken mind, get simple quests aimed at grinding, play dice (we bet on a certain value falling out on the d6 die). Here you can use gold to increase the number of slots in your inventory and bank.
Gangster Market. We sell and buy items. Prices are stinging. As you progress, equipment of higher grades becomes available, the cost of things increases dramatically, but the clothes are worth it.
Blacksmith "Black Anvil". Allows you to improve equipment for resources and gold.
Alchemist "Serious decoctions" (free translation). can craft a whole bunch of goodies from ingredients, according to pre-existing recipes. After looking through this window, it becomes clear that, as in the last game, almost none of the ingredients are useless.
Combat Academy. In fact, this is an analogue of guilds from the previous game. Our hero can use both skills and spells. The number of cells of both is limited. Passive and active enhancements available. All skills are upgraded with increased effects from them. If necessary, you can pump for gold, but this is an expensive pleasure.
Sometimes events occur in the city that can greatly affect the settlement. For example, the loss of a shipment of iron by merchants will lead to a temporary closure of the forge; a crop failure will lead to an increase in food prices. It seems like little things, but they create an atmosphere.
There’s still a great task system. They, as before, are divided into small things from the tavern (such as kill 5 robbers), ordinary quests (several types, not for one dungeon run) and serious, world tests. It will be extremely difficult to get to the latter; first you still have to fulfill the conditions in order to just start them.
The main activity that is provided in the game is clearing several types of dungeons. Let’s see how it all happens. We go on a hike by pressing the appropriate button on the city screen and find ourselves on the world map. Here we select the place where we want to go and see what types of opponents inhabit the location.
It is worth considering that each new approach to the same dungeon increases its level, and therefore its complexity. You can’t grind mindlessly. Either you will have to constantly increase the degree of difficulty or lose some of the rewards by failing (intentionally or simply by losing a battle) the race.
There are a number of rules in dungeons:
– If health drops to zero, then this is either the final death of the hero or a fine in gold. It depends on what will be selected in the starting party settings.
– If the mind drops to zero, then the same story as with health. But maybe there won’t be death in roguelike mode, I haven’t checked. The lower the mind decreases, the more likely it is that special monsters will attack us in the dungeon.
– For each movement across the cells in the dungeon, one unit of supplies is consumed. If there is suddenly no food, you will still be able to walk for a while, but your health will begin to decline.
Dungeon battles are a very important gameplay moment. They represent a separate window where we can use active skills, consumables, or simply escape.
There are many types of enemies, they can bring surprises. Mini-bosses encountered. Strong bosses, as far as I understand, are objects of global quests and you can’t fight them so easily, you must first fulfill the prerequisites.
Also in the dungeons, from time to time we come across various kinds of events and events with detailed descriptions. Sometimes we manage to complete a piece of some global task and then we get great rewards.
A new type of combat has been added – on ships. This is where our special skills come into play. To some extent, this is a replacement for sieges from the previous game.
I was very pleased that high-quality work was carried out work on mistakes, which took place in the first part.
The sound settings have been fixed, the hit button has become normal, and not made of two poorly visible pixels, normal descriptions of weapons and equipment, screenshots are taken (with a creak) in Steam by pressing F12.
Let’s look at the pros and cons of the game and summarize.
+ Simple but nice graphics.
+ Good music and sound design.
+ Excellent role-playing system with stats, perks, skills and spells.
+ Excellent city design structure. Many useful points of interest and activities.
+ Lots of all kinds of events.
+ Interesting dungeon exploration.
+ Good battles, many types of enemies. There are bosses and mini-bosses.
+ You can play like a roguelike (there is perma-death) or like a roguelite (there is no perma-death). Pleased everyone.
+ Many types of items. They are all useful for something. Even things that seem to be needed only for sale can be the purpose of the task.
+ Good crafting systems for the blacksmith and alchemist.
+ Good survival system. It is not put at the forefront, replacing the game itself, as is often the case.
WHAT CAN BE BOTH ADVANTAGE AND MINUS:
± Visual retro style of the game. Personally, I’m delighted with the design. Everything is nice, super minimalistic, comfortable. But I understand those who may not like it.
± The difficulty of passing increases rapidly. The completed dungeons are becoming more and more difficult. On the one hand, a certain tension is felt, on the other, it’s clearly more interesting.
– Screenshots are taken in Steam (F12), but extremely crookedly, with a long time delay.
– No Russian language text. The required level of knowledge of English, purely for the game and passing (running to the city/dungeon) – low, if you need to understand everything (descriptions of events, lore, global tasks) – above average.
Old school style. Lots of content. Slowly planning your moves. Interesting exploration of the world and combat. Something is constantly happening that affects the game (events, ambushes and random points of interest in dungeons). You can spend a lot of time playing the game.
Quite noticeable improvements have been made relative to the previous part. We cleaned up technical problems, brought in new content (albeit taking away some of the old), and made it more visually attractive.
I can recommend both the first and second parts, they are very nice games. Grim Tides also goes to favorites.
PS: I will be glad to add/correct the review or answer questions along the way in the comments.