Alaloth: Champions of The Four Kingdoms Reviews

Game is fun for sure. The competitive mode is really interesting, and adds a sense of urgency and makes you want to use your time wisely. I played it a while ago, like a year or two ago, and man has the game changed since then. Combat is fun, you wll start to feel OP pretty quickly but then you will definitely run into some encounters that humble you, I hope there are far more challenging encounters to come because that's where the game really shines. There are SO many sidequests and POI's to check out. I've only been focusing on working toward beating the other race's champions in the artifact gathering, and doing the Dragonhold questline, outside of that I've only really done side content that has useful item rewards, and I still have like 2 dozen quests in my log that I just came across naturally. There are some negatives, mainly for me it has to do with itemization and spells. Both systems are far improved from the first time I played, but there is still alot of room for improvement imo. Gear gets very samey, very quickly, as you get some pretty strong stuff thrown at you in a relatively short period of time, and from there on each item is basically identical or sometimes slightly better. I think that power progression could be drawn out some more, with items having more defined strengths and weaknesses rather than all basically being the same with a few % more or less of a couple stats. Spells are very hit or miss. Balance is not good, some spells are just absolutely useless and others demolish everything. Necromancer/Warlock dots for instance do no damage, ever. the Ice nova spell can burn through an entire dungeon full of mobs in a couple ticks. They have added alot of magic schools and seem to be focusng on it, which is great, but its a big pain point for me currently.

The combat is fun, I have a lot of questions about some of the other design decisions but the combat is by far the most important part of a game like this and it works so it gets a recommend from me even though I can see a lot of people finding this game totally unplayable. The start of the game is extremely difficult to get into, this is early 90s RPG level of "we're just going to drop you in game with a lore dump and you can go figure out what to do". Even after a few hours of poking around and trying different things I have no idea what's going on and I'm basically just chasing quests around the map aimlessly. If there were fewer quests and lore dumps and longer combat encounters the flow of the game would feel a lot better, maybe this clears up once you've got through the early game but it's very overwhelming at the start

A Cross between diablo and Dark Souls. The combat is deep and satisfying and the lore is perfectly high fantasy. The devs have been really committed to this game for a long time. I bought in early access and waited until 1.0 to play. They just dropped a free content patch that a AAA studio would have charged full price for. These are good devs making a great game. So them some love!

i just wonder, why there is no potion station in orc stronghold? this is a bug or what? i wanna make potion with my orc hero in my stronghold

So, I'm rewriting my review now that the initial hate-arc has worn off. I do believe in helping indie studios and games, so I want to do the right thing here and make a good, coherent review. My last review was sort of mean and not really helpful. Simply put, I don't recommend this game if you're looking for a finished, consistently enjoyable product for most RPG players. To go more into detail, it's very well crafted, but it falls into the same problem a lot of indies do which is A. mislabelling, and B. inconsistent levels of polish. The first is self-explanatory. Sorry, but this is NOT a soulslike in the slightest. There's really nothing that puts this in that category outside of a semi-functional dodge mechanic. The second, to put it simply, means that some parts of the game have AAA-level development and shine on them, and others seem very lowly: especially the inventory UI and UI in general. I like the dialogue menus, I like the passing NPC comments and such, but things that the player can click on are tricky and the controls are strange. They don't look very nice either, though that's a very secondary issue. Leveling up is actually somewhat of a chore for this reason. On the gameplay, to be honest, it's meh. I do feel the RPG aspects are very fleshed out after the last few major updates, but the game markets itself on the combat, and I was unable to see why, personally. It's unrewarding and seems poorly engineered. You're sort of stuck in place while you attack with no real way to cancel your moves, and enemies all swarm and attack at once. You essentially have to trade damage most of the time. The combat has lots of fun mechanics but there's no incentive to use them, because they don't fully work or there's easier (or cheesier) alternatives. On a side note, the enemy variety is really nice. A good portion of them feel just like reskinned versions of eachother, but patches are fixing that and those happen quite often. A major plus to this title is that the developer updates the game constantly, and listens to player feedback on the balancing side. A major minus, though, is that the dev seems rather protective of the game's larger mechanics such as the combat. Not willing to accept criticism on certain things. A quick look through any of the negative comments will show this. Including mine. I have seen a few where he curses at players, which, generally speaking isn't a great look. I read online where he justifies this in a press release, saying something along the lines of "sometimes the players are wrong" and I do agree with him on that. Gamers say stuff for no reason sometimes. I did a little bit before I edited this review. Unfortunately he seems to have gotten too comfortable with assuming so. There's some criticisms that need to be taken more seriously that aren't. And yeah, I'm sorry, I don't care what anyone says, 35 dollars is too much for this game, at least right now. It's just not worth that amount of money. With that amount of money, you could easily get a well-known game that has had more time in the spotlight and is easier for you to find information on and decide whether you want to buy it or not. You could buy a pizza pie for 35 dollars and it would probably hold your attention for longer than this game. Maybe that's mean, but in truth it's hard to get into this game, and hard to stay into it. Gameplay loop is repetitive, and the quests are sort of all the same. The aim is to capture combat zones, but after a while they all feel the same, and the combat isn't good enough to give reason to keep playing. The lore is really well-written. I believe a writer from Bethesda wrote it. It does feel a little shallow, and a little copy-paste generic fantasy. Some of it is incredibly fleshed out and thoughtful. Make you think. Other parts are wide as an ocean and deep as a puddle. Lot of text, not a lot of depth. Again, this sort of goes with the inconsistent polish argument. It is worth mentioning that these things tend to get solved as time goes on and the developer is able to focus on more fine-tuning. The lore sort of feels like a placeholder right now, at least most of it. I don't think this game should have removed its Early Access tag. It does still feel very much like an Early Access game, even more so than some games that are actually in Early Access. The character models are kinda ugly. It's sort of a good thing that the camera is so far away from any of them. However, weapons, armor, items, environments and such are actually incredibly well-made. Generally, the visual assets for this game are some of the best I've ever seen in an indie game, and that's saying a lot. I do really want to drive that point home- This game looks great. I guess my main problem is that I just wish it played as good as it looked. If it's on sale for 20 or less, you should *maybe* buy it. There's a decent amount of people who love this game and everything about it. Maybe you'll be one of them. But if you've played any larger-scale RPGs like this title aspires to be, you'll likely be disappointed as I was by Alaloth. Is it worth supporting to see where it goes? At this rate, yes, updates are constant. The developer, though, being rather argumentative and involved in several controversies, has potential to fail if we're going by history. I would think through a purchase of this game before doing it. Probably not worth it.

The durability of your equipment is designed to be hit with a -1 per item per fight regardless of anything. Some quests in the game due to this will cost you thousands of gold. I've been informed that this is intended. So due to awful design I have to thumbs down this one.

Doesn't respect my time at all. Locked into dungeons, cannot access inventory, upon death everything is lost without a chance to recover any of it. Might be fine for streamers but I have limited time and I can't see anyway I could enjoy playing and leveling.

Amazing gem of a game. Is it perfect? no, but at the same time I was very let down to see not many playing it or giving it a chance. The combat needs a few minutes to grow on you and then this game opens right up. Sad also to see "mixed" ratings, this game deserves better. Note for new players - turn on the slow motion effect during combat (options menu).

I can honestly say I've never played anything like this. There's so much soul to the game that it's worth it to try out if you're into niche RPGs, in my opinion. On the other hand, the amount of jank is hard to ignore sometimes . . . BUT the devs seem to be working tirelessly to make it the best experience possible, so it'll only get better from here.

Look, I can see the devs' good intentions and passion in this project. Too bad the project isn't all that good. I wanted to like the game at the start, but eventually, playing, you realize there isn't much there gameplay wise. And unfortunately, I'll give it a thumbs down.