4/5, would be AMAZING with more options - research upgrades over a longer campaign, unit choices and customization, etc. I love the steampunk setting and alt history campaign as well as the gameplay - would love to see a more replayable, fully featured version!
Splitter jumping is quite clearly by design. It only happens when they die within one square of a one square wall. Keep your front walls 2 squares thick to counter splitters.
This game is really cool, I've been playing for hours which is quite an accomplishment for a turn-based Flash game!
Things I would love to see include more diverse character advancement options, more randomly generated loot, and perhaps a free play mode or at least a much longer mode... Along with multiple save games! Still, 5/5, among my favorite games on Kongregate even before it's done being updated. Good work as always, undefined!
Some basic tips:
To get a high score on any level, the key things are to rush as much as possible, especially the early waves where you can often rush a couple at a time without leaking; and to increase your mana pool as many times and as early as possible to increase the score multiplier sooner. In addition, pay attention to the bonuses you get at the end of a level for things like rushing lots of waves, not building towers or traps, etc.
DO NOT expect to keep progressing without having to go back and level up more. You should always do the highlighted triple point modes on each level when you can, and endurance can be a good source of extra exp when you get stuck since you get exp even if you don't finish. Remember - you get more exp only by beating your old high score, and you only get the difference between your old and new high score.
Pretty well implemented but way too easy. All you have to do is spam attacks to every empty cell ASAP, outproduce and win easily.
Not just too easy early; too easy if you've ever played this type of game before. The AI is slow as molasses!
Add a Restart button that also clears saved data and it goes from 4/5 to 5/5. It's a pain in the *** to try for the Hard badge and wait through reloading and intro videos every time.
I don't have an optimal guide yet but it looks like the second level is a good option for training a hero... In my first couple tries I've managed to net around 200 exp on my hero, but my build isn't very efficient and I bet you can do better by getting the hero out quicker. That's using the high damage fire hero who is admittedly the best for that level. By the way, if anyone hasn't realised this yet, you can replay old levels you've already beaten for full exp and gold. Levels are as easy as you want them to be - just grind your way to maxed out skills and a bunch of high level heroes and then steamroll through the game if that's your thing.
Here's a simple farming guide if you're stuck early on:
Play the first level. Find the 2x2 squares of paved tiles on each side. You will build mages on the inside corners (the tile furthest from the paths on each square) and a warrior across the path on the outside corner directly below each square.
Build the warriors first, then the mages, then upgrade the mages to Fire when you can. You will leak a bit on wave 8 and leak the boss once but it's not worth the gold to build enough to no leak; you don't lose that much exp. This method takes about 8 minutes if you click through once you're done building (early wave 3 typically) and you get over 170 gold and 200 exp depending on how many bats you leak on wave 8. Enjoy!
To people saying it's too hard: you can repeat old levels for gold and exp to get skills and heroes faster. Do this whenever you get stuck and you'll be fine!
This game is atrocious. Where to begin? The gameplay is uninspired and really has no edge over the kajillions of other generic shooters. The level designs are ugly, repetitive and unintuitive, which is especially obnoxious on the first mission. I get frequent graphical glitches - most commonly, white lines appearing briefly across the entire game area. The non-scrolling boss and miniboss areas are horribly bugged - if you find a spot it will let you walk off screen on, nothing can hit you. This makes the survive bit at the end of mission 2 literally impossible to fail if you know this trick. The game is mind-numbingly easy; I've never dropped below 70 hp, even on boss fights. I still have no idea what the G and S powerups do, since there is no in-game explanation of them and no tutorial or help feature. 1/5
The game definitely gets harder as you move on, which is good. Aggro does at least pull from character proximity for factions that dislike you.
A few new concerns:
1. I died crossing the bridge to the second town and revived in the second town. Not a biggie but saved me the return trip.
2. The skill tooltip thing I mentioned earlier should also apply to the cast bar thing for reference - opening Abilities to check the cost or damage of a spell is clumsy.
3. The first real gameplay concern... The increasing mana cost of higher ranked skills makes some skills _worse_ in most cases as you level them, e.g. the mage hold person type spell. Oftentimes the few extra seconds is not worth the added cost. Some way to use older ranks of skills when desired would be nice... Maybe hold down a key while clicking to use rank one of the selected skill instead?
Awesome game, 5/5. That said, a few small gripes:
1. The save system. WTF, this is 2008. Give us save anywhere functionality and multiple save slots so we can try all three classes without losing our progress!
2. Popups can be annoying (tutorials, buy windows, quest windows, etc.) when they come up at bad times or don't go away when you're done with them. Make them disappear when you click anywhere off of them.
3. It's easy to shoot accidentally when trying to pick up an item. Not sure what the solution is here, but some change to prevent this would be awesome.
4. Maybe it's just the early stages but aggro seems to only pull if you shoot a mob really close to another one. Other things should pull aggro - the player being too close, an already pulled mob running by, etc. Maybe this happens later?
5. The tooltip for spells you haven't bought yet doesn't tell you what they do.
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