Alaloth: Champions of The Four Kingdoms Reviews

chraming game, worth diving in

Great game, Ive been meaning to come back around and will again eventually. perhaps workshop support?

Not a co-op game. Especially since you can't get companions (i.e. co-op friends) for the final battles.

Really fun game with rewarding loot system, and lots of build diversity. Lore is very well written, lots of reading obviously with no voice acting, but decent for a high fantasy setting. Showing quest rewards is a very nice feature for theorycrafting. Companions are decent, but kind of shallow, maybe flesh out a bit more, potential romance but not necessary. Only nitpick is specific bosses that infinitely spawn trash mobs that punish any melee builds. Companions die eventually, so cannot hold out forever against them while you are fighting boss so you just end up running for your life with no opening to attack ever. Mage builds easily take care of this with AoE spells and crowd control, handling infinite trash mobs and boss at the same time from a safe distance while kiting. So just get rid of infinite trash mobs plz and let me 1v1 the boss instead of just sprinting around in circles waiting to die. Other major issue is getting just stun locked even when having 100% "stun" resistance. Specific attacks are animation knockdown effects and there's no way to hyper armor/poise through them so it makes berserker rage and building stun resistance worthless.

I haven't played that much, and I only played the "Single Champion" mode, however, I quite like this game so far. Personally, I would not describe it as Baldur's Gate meets Dark Souls, but more similar to Sacred: Underworld / Sacred 2. In any case you will certainly feel that Dark Souls euphoria in some moments, and that is SPECIAL! And of course the combat is very inspired by the Souls games. Gameplay loop is very exciting and rewarding, even when it starts feeling a little bit repetitive. The feeling of clearing a tough dungeon and getting that crazy strong Purple sword is amazing! The world is huge and very interesting, and while I wish it was an open world like in the Sacred games, it is still fun to explore new places and fight new enemies. Most of the systems are just serviceable, and nothing mind blowing, but mixed together, make for an interesting character progression. No need to reinvent the wheel every time folks! I found some small bugs here and there, but nothing game breaking so far. The animations and the general movement around the world, outside of the world map, can feel a bit clunky / unpolished, but I'd rather no-life this game any day, over playing the latest Ubislop. I am really excited to play this game more, and what the devs are cooking for the future! Also, the game does not waste your time, and you can definitely make up your mind in 2 hours about it, so there is no risk by purchasing it, and I would strongly recommend that you do!

Alaloth feels like a mashup from a bunch of different games. It has some CRPG influence, APRG influence, and the world map mechanics even feel like a bit of Might and Magic. Its actually a rare to see an ARPG that is such slow pace these days, and that was the one of the main draws for me. While not perfect, the parry and dodge mechanics feel great, and I wish more companies would make these types of slower ARPG's that focus on tactical combat rather than teleporting and while deleting packs of enemies over and over. I also think the game mode that allows for multiple AI companions to compete against you was a really neat idea. My only complaint is that the game feels a bit easy overall, and even on my first run it seems like I'm well ahead of the enemies progress. It feels like the game could even expand on this mode further, or create a new mode, by adding rogue-like elements. There's a lot of potential with this game mode, but so far it hasn't posed much of a challenge. The level design is also simplistic overall. This is another example where the game almost feels somewhere between a rogue-like and a CRPG/ARPG. You load into a point on the map, and while there is some variation in terms of aesthetics, pretty much all of the maps are basic corridors with packs of enemies here and there. Even if it feels like a lot of the systems could have been flushed out more, I'm still enjoying the game overall. It feels super unique, and I'm very satisfied with the pacing of the combat.

I haven't played this very long. I picked it up because Chirs Avellone was involved in it, and I buy everything he's touched. I have to say I didn't notice it had very strong worldbuilding or writing, but it has an interesting and very difficult combat system that you have to put time into mastering. I like the observation that it is an 'Isometric Dark Souls Diablo-type'. I don't really have time to learn its intricate and complex combat system and kept dying, so shelved it, but I am sure people who like the idea of the game will enjoy it a lot more. As it stands it is an interesting combination of genres that I had not seen before.