Alaloth: Champions of the Four Kingdoms Preview - Page 3
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This to me is a great example of working hard instead of smart. The developers here have clearly come up with a lot of rich and deep lore for their game. And they obviously care a lot about it. But they've seemingly forgotten to figure out a way to make their players care about that stuff.
You can't just throw walls of text at people and expect them to care. You need interesting characters, intriguing scenarios, and stimulating conversations where the player is an active participant. You need events that leave the player with new questions and the desire to figure out how everything connects. All of that is lacking in Alaloth at this point. And if you remember that the game is supposed to be inspired by Baldur's Gate, it's hard not to wonder what exactly Alaloth's developers liked there. The camera angle, I guess?
The game does have companions. Four for each of the three available alignments. And they come with their own personal quests that, while more elaborate than the rest, are still way too linear. I'm not sure if it would be possible to add more choices and consequences to the game throughout early access, but it sure would be welcome.
Dungeon Crawling
A curious thing about Alaloth is how its campaign is structured. The four shards you need to find are scattered all over the place. When you start the game, you don't know which of the dungeons hold them, so you'll need to clear out a whole bunch of them before you find the shards.
Unfortunately, the dungeons here tend to be fairly linear and limited in size. You usually have a straight line to your goal, with occasional side passages and closed doors that require you to find a key before advancing.
On the plus side, once you enter a dungeon, you can't adjust your inventory, meaning you have to consider which gear to equip and which consumables to prepare beforehand.
And, at the very least, while not particularly inspired in their level design, all the dungeons look nice and manage to evoke a feeling of a fantasy adventure.
Another thing you have to keep in mind is that you don't regenerate health between encounters. If you want to restore health, you'll need to either use a healing skill, drink a potion, or rest at a tavern.
Considering the game's Dark Souls-inspired combat, you would think this would make it quite difficult. However, once you figure out how things work, find some gear that's not complete garbage, and learn to stop worrying and love the heavy attack, you shouldn't have any issues getting through the currently available content.
In fact, the durability of your gear is a much bigger concern than your health. The better your gear, the more expensive it is to repair it. And early on, it felt to me like I was in one big downward spiral since my gear kept deteriorating faster than I earned gold.
But once I actually figured out how durability worked, things became bearable. You see, each encounter, be it a major dungeon or the two random skeletons that waylay you on your way to the dungeon, reduces the durability of all your items by a single point. So, as long as you avoid random encounters and the bounties that incentivize you to seek them out, you should be good, durability-wise.
