Lionheart demo now available

Lemmy · July 29, 2003, 03:18

Anyone playd it yet?
For those who don't know the game, Lionheart is an RPG in the 15th century or so in an alternate universe.
It is the 2nd game series to use the SPECIAL system for the characters, Fallout being the first to ever use that.

There is a list of download servers over here:
http://www.duckandcover.net/#1059423079

I'm currently downloading it myself...more then 1 hour left

Lionheart site

Grumbold · July 29, 2003, 07:55

Hmm, even at 150 meg I think I'm going to have to bite the bullet and download this one. I'm eager to see how they've interpreted the special system.

Lemmy · July 29, 2003, 15:42

I played it for while, it's interesting.

Character creation is more tedious compared to fallout, 2 screens instead of one, and several tab panes on the right. It takes some getting used to, but if you know the SPECIAL system you'll quickly find your way to the familiar statistics.

I really like the way they've implemented the skills, there are 3 main groups: Fighting, Thieving and Magic, and all groups have about the same amount of skills, all of them with a very distinct use.
My character is a bit of an allrounder, concentrating on Perception, Agility and Intelligence with off course the Gifted trait...don't know what i'd do without it

.

I like the way you get experience while sneaking past an enemy. It seems that for each "sight roll" the enemy fails, you get experience. So if you wait a while before attacking, you could get a dozen xp points early on without doing anything.

Also something interesting is that when creating a character, you have to choose which type of spirit you'll carry with you. You can choose from Elemental, Bestial and Demonic.
During the game, the spirit you've chosen will appear and give you tips and hints.

Biggest turnoff so far is the realtime combat system combined with the fast movement of your enemies. For me there is virtually no time to take any action between the moment they've noticed, and the moment they are standing next to me and killing me.

I'[ve only played as human so far, but i'm stil curious about the different branches of magic..

So far i'm enjoying it.

Grumbold · July 29, 2003, 18:05

Estimated time left downloading 8:55:54

Can you spacebar pause the combat manically like the BG games or flick it into semi turn based like fallout tactics?

Imran Siddiqui · July 29, 2003, 18:08

WEEEE... Download

.

I believe you may pause the combat and give orders.. or so they said

.

Tuberski · July 29, 2003, 18:23

Have to wait til thursday to get it.

ACK!

Imran Siddiqui · July 29, 2003, 22:23

Ooooh... fun.

But you can't pause during battles and give orders (though you can change inventory)

Damn them!

But I like the game, good fun... and some GREAT graphics. I especially love your spirit that tells you stuff

.

It looks like it'll be great game (in spite of the lack of giving battle orders while paused).

Tuberski · July 29, 2003, 23:06

Maybe you will be able to in the final release....

ACK!

Victor Galis · July 29, 2003, 23:08

Quote:

Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui
Ooooh... fun.

But you can't pause during battles and give orders (though you can change inventory)

Damn them!

Then what good is the game?

DrSpike · July 30, 2003, 03:07

Don't suppose this has anything to do with the original Lionheart, which appeared on the Amiga (and possibly related platforms) about 10 years ago?

Lemmy · July 30, 2003, 05:03

Quote:

Originally posted by Tuberski
Maybe you will be able to in the final release....

ACK!

It would be very stupid not to put that in.

Another good thing i noticed, while talking to people, icons may appear next to the lines you can reply with. The icons indicite the reaction to your line, for example accepting a quest, ending a quest (and getting your reward), ending dialogue or starting a fight.

Grumbold · July 30, 2003, 05:56

Download completed just in time for me to try generating a character before having to leave for work this morning. Looks like there's lots and lots of variety there, so I hope the storyline can sustain replay interest too.

I really couldn't decide which stats, traits or skills to concentrate on since so many seemed to be fun to have, unlike Fallout where I always favoured guns over hand to hand every time. Good stuff!

Imran Siddiqui · July 30, 2003, 10:52

Quote:

Another good thing i noticed, while talking to people, icons may appear next to the lines you can reply with. The icons indicite the reaction to your line, for example accepting a quest, ending a quest (and getting your reward), ending dialogue or starting a fight.

Yeah, that was good

. Not to mention that the game is BEAUTIFUL. Very nicely done graphics, especially your spirit

.

It's very fun... but VERY hard in the beginning.... especially in the Barcelona Coast area. What REALLY sucks is there is no 'rest' option, so you just have to putz around until your health regenerates.

I have a feeling though that this demo stops JUST short of the city of Barcelona

. I guess that'll make you want the game to play more, but the conversations and stuff like that is what I want to see.

Hopefully you'll be able to take your save game from the demo and use it on the main game. I really don't want to play this beginning part again

.

Grumbold · July 30, 2003, 11:09

Apparently the demo has practically nothing in common with the real game start, its just a hack job to show off some of the game features. Cant seem to find the link for that though .. I came here looking for it in order to post it elsewhere

Imran Siddiqui · July 30, 2003, 11:26

Yeah, I just read that Grumbold

.

It's in the forums... they took 3 random places, apparently. I wish there was more cities and dialogue though, like the most of the game is supposed to be. That's the stuff I'm looking for.

Kinda strange to have the demo so combat heavy, when the full game won't have that much combat in it, relative to other things

.

Grumbold · July 30, 2003, 19:18

Yeah I've just finished the demo and I'm pretty disappointed. Its late so I won't make a big post now but lets just say I'm not expecting it to be scoring >80% scores if the real game is like the demo.

Imran Siddiqui · July 30, 2003, 21:27

Grumbold, I think the demo was supposed to be VERRY combat heavy... but the combat sucked.

There is supposed to be a ton more dialog in the game. Hopefully!!

Sarxis · July 31, 2003, 04:09

Quote:

Originally posted by Lemmy
I really like the way they've implemented the skills, there are 3 main groups: Fighting, Thieving and Magic, and all groups have about the same amount of skills, all of them with a very distinct use.

Morrowind rip-off.

Of course, who knows where Bethesda got it from; its actually a pretty standard way to group fantasy skills.

Lemmy · July 31, 2003, 04:22

Quote:

Morrowind rip-off.

Of course, who knows where Bethesda got it from; its actually a pretty standard way to group fantasy skills.

Heh, maybe, but IIRC the Thieving and Magic groups in Morrowing also included combat skills, so you only need to specialize in one group if you wanted to a thief for example.

Here it seems that you need at least 1 combat skill, or heavily invest in some destructive magic.

Grumbold · July 31, 2003, 08:40

- The screen is 800 x 600 only, which is a pity because...

- The interface takes up too much of the game screen. While you can toggle it off, I find the quick slots and text window invaluable.

- The main character is poorly animated. Sneaking at the slowest pace through to the fastest run is all donw with one walk animation that just looks terrible at running pace.

- Despite being large, some of the interface buttons are very small and badly placed. Quicksave and quickload pixels apart is just asking for grief!

- The chat window is not very user friendly. It would be better if it was centre screen while you engaged in dialogue.

- Point allocation on levelling up is very unforgiving. There is no way I could find to back out if you put a point in the wrong place.

- There are lots of options in combat, with fast, normal or calculated swings at various body locations, but absolutely no feedback on what your chances of hitting actually are. The luck factor was high too so it seemed easier to just wade in and quicksave/quickload until you got a good result than fanny around with the combat options. Criticals seem limited to dishing out knockback and extra damage, at least that was the only obvious result.

- The same sort of thing applies to lockpicking. The only way to guage the difficulty of a lock is to quicksave, try to open it three times then quickload. Repeat about 10 times and if you have failed you can be fairly sure you've got no chance of opening it. A red/amber/green traffic light to show you if there was any point in even trying would save a lot of frustration.

- your animal companion in the demo is a pain in the bum. Because it meanders around you on a wide leash it can easily aggro more monsters than you want at the worst possible moment. It doesn't seem to care if you're sneaking or stationary either. Hopefully humanoid companions aren't as moronic.

- Combat against anything except the slowest monsters is going to be melee before you can fire off an arrow unless you're on the ball. Since you cant target while paused, firing off spells and melee swings in succession is a pain and you can easily click different enemies by mistake.

- Gauntlets and armbands use the same armour slot. One of my pet hates.

None of this stuff makes Lionheart a terrible game, but it does hint at less than first class production values. I just hope that they consider tweaking some of the bits that could go a long way to giving it more polish and playability. While I prefer TB games I'm not averse to RT combat, in fact I think Divine Divinity does it very well. It just doesn't fit with the level of complexity and difficulty that seems to be in Lionheart.

A speed slider, targetting when paused and hopefully some feedback on your success chances when opting for a calculated head shot vs a wild swing at the legs of an ogre would really help, as would an attempt to give at least the main character some more variation in their movement animation. If it arrives in the same state as the demo I don't expect high review scores even if the plotline is really strong.

Victor Galis · July 31, 2003, 13:54

Well from what I've heard here, it looks like the game's not even worth a download then. Back to EV Nova it is

Grumbold · August 1, 2003, 04:56

I don't think the demo is worth a download because if it fairly represents the game then Lionheart has problems. If the demo cut so much stuff to make it fit in 150mb that it is not a fair representation, then you don't want it to colour your opinion if reviews say the real thing is better

General Ludd · August 30, 2003, 21:04

I tried the full version and was not impressed. The game starts the same as the demo, except that you get teleported (by a character) to Barcelona imediately after leaving the jail. The first little mini quest I find in barcelona has me rescuing a merchants daughter from bandits, who are keeping her ransom inside his house. Turns out that his house is a sprawling dungeon-like (jail cells and all) labrynth which actually seems to be larger then the entire gate district of Barcelona

Inside, there is a varitable army of bandits along with a bunch of unexplainable poison-spitting monsters. There is not even any dialouge with the bandits - there's one charging at you as soon as you enter the door without a word spoken.

I stoped playing the game before finishing that quest... maybe I'm making an unfair or premature judgment, but the game seems like crap to me.

Grumbold · August 31, 2003, 13:26

All the reviews so far score it pretty low (i.e. 70% or so). I'm waiting until it hits the budget shelf, which doesn't seem like its going to take long.

General Ludd · August 31, 2003, 16:33

Personally, I had more fun playing the demo of Richochet (a block-breaking paddle game) that came with Lionheart then the game itself.

DrSpike · August 31, 2003, 18:00

Quote:

Originally posted by Osweld
Personally, I had more fun playing the demo of Richochet (a block-breaking paddle game) that came with Lionheart then the game itself.

Not a ringing endorsement.

It never ceases to amaze me how few games I've spent more time on that 'silly' games like minesweeper and freecell.