D20: Reinventing the Wheel

[News Portal]

A spell behind the controls of action-RPG Krater has convinced our resident RPG guru, Daniel Wilks, that some wheels are better left un-reinvented.

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[Mekon]

Krater has it's moments... but I agree that it is certainly flawed.

I like the quirkiness of the setting. The overland map is a nice touch of nostalgia and I quite like the mini-instances.

Where it fails is, as mentioned in the article, ensuring any kind of connection with the eminently replaceable and two-dimensional party members.

[Jez]

There are actually four classes by the way, not that I bothered using the slayer. There are also various gadgets ranging from grenades to medkits that can also be looted and equipped, though they are a bit lacklustre towards the end game. I also thought Krater was quite a flawed game, but I nonetheless finished it and enjoyed it for the brief 15 hours with abrupt ending. I do agree that the party mechanic is quite flawed, as the story seems to indicate continuity with the characters you're using, but the gameplay encourages you to treat them as expendable and interchangable. Though I actually found it more efficient in the longrun to upgrade existing characters, as even though it cost 23k to turn a starting character into one that could get to level 15, replacing all the boosters and implants equipped to that character was not cheap either.

[Marius]

Good article Daniel. This is how I'm kinda starting to feel about Guild Wars 2 as well. Playing The Secret World, really loving my hybrid healer. But I can't do that in GW2... all the game lets me do is spam DPS skills, because they see healing (or any other dedicated part of the trinity) as evil.

As fun as innovation is, there'll always be a place for the tried and tested.