There is nothing like sitting back with a cosy book, listening to the rain, and planning how to expand my undead army. Is that just me?
It is nice to be more active lately, isn’t it? In today’s double bill I’m covering The Necromancer’s Tale and Alpha Response. I’ve spent a decent amount of time on both and while they are completely different games, they make an interesting pairing. If you have played these games before, let us know what you think! No need for any big introduction rambles from me today, so let us kick things off. This will be a shorter piece as I work on some bigger projects, but hope you enjoy!
The Necromancer’s Tale
The Necromancer’s Tale is developed by Psychic Software, and it is pretty impressive in the scope of its story. Quite often on Steam we see a ton of game tags that are inaccurate, but story-rich is definitely a tag that holds up. There is an excellent atmosphere on display with full voice acting, and great writing to back that up.
This is one of those old school games that prioritize story and worldbuilding over gameplay, and the latter is unfortunately something this game struggles with. Fortunately, The Necromancer’s Tale’s strengths far outweigh the drawbacks for me, and I won’t be surprised if it makes my Top 10 in December. I have yet to play enough for a full review (a single run can take over 40 hours) so consider this my usual early impressions. So far however, I am impressed!
The story and overall atmosphere are excellent, drawing you into a richly developed world with tons of characters with every one having their ambitions and personalities. One of the most enjoyable aspects is the way you can develop your necromantic powers and watch as NPCs react to your growing influence. The soundtrack is another highlight with some gorgeous tracks. The amount of dialogue is mind boggling with over 400,000 words total between the conversations and lore.
Gameplay is a little shaky at times with the basic combat system being a little basic for my liking. Making an army of skeletons and shambling undead is a lot of fun, but feels a bit tedious during the actual combat. Some of the bigger battles take ages to complete. Like many classic RPGs, combat is something that’s a little abandoned in favor of atmosphere and characters. Fortunately, combat isn’t too big a focus and you have an option to skip them entirely.
This is a great game so far, especially for fans of story heavy RPGs. Combat is a bit of a chore and I’ve found a couple of navigation bugs, but this is a great game for its modest 25$ price tag. If you are unsure whether to stump up the cash, The Necromancer’s Tale comes with a sizable demo that gives a good impression of what’s on offer. I like how demos are returning to the limelight, and they are vital for a game like this.
Alpha Response
I had my eye on Alpha Response for a while. Developed by the original creator of the first Counterstrike, Alpha Response is one of those SWAT police simulators that puts players into brutal combat situations. It launched in Early Access last October, and the publishers through PressEngine were very kind to offer us a review code to see how the game is shaping up.
This is a hard game to rate because Alpha Response is both one of the most engaging experiences I’ve had this year and the most frustrating. Early Access is often exhausting for players to deal with as it is like throwing money into a gambling machine, but there are many successes within it. The failures often get remembered more however, so there has long been a cloud of concern with Early Access games. That is understandable, especially with an ambitious title like this one. This is a game that’s brimming with ambition and an enjoyable experience, but it suffers from a ton of performance gremlins that hold it back from being more.
The potential for brilliance is everywhere in Alpha Response. It is an unorthodox team based sim that’s similar to games like SWAT 4, Payday, and Ready or Not. While the game is still a bit thin on content, there are multiple maps and missions to mess around with but more like a hodgepodge of playable yet unpolished pieces. I know that sounds worse than it is, but I’ve found a ton of fun amongst all the different missions. Between the diverse range of objectives to the expansive open ended maps, I rarely found myself bored.
As said however, the game is still pretty rough around the edges especially on the technical side. The game is as optimised as a hog in molasses and I found navigating the larger maps to be a pain. It will stutter a lot even on high end hardware and I had a tendency to crash during heavy fire sessions. Despite these ongoing problems, I feel Alpha Response is in a decent state and it has a reasonable 20$ price tag to match.
