Hard to be a God - Demo Impressions @ Filefront

Dhruin

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Filefront has some impressions of the recently released Hard to be a God demo:
Once I left the safety of the walls surrounding my encampment, I came upon a peasant who was in need of help. You can choose to help him, or go about your merry way - I chose to help and when I got down off of my horse to fight some nearby bandits I was wishing I had just stayed the course and ignored the guy. The bandits themselves were not so hard to defeat, even with my character being a total weakling at this point, but wolves ganged up on me while I was fighting said bandits and killed me; thus ending my demo. So to be honest, I have no idea what the actual duration of the demo is, but I do know that if you die it is over.
More information.
 
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I've played the Russian full version released in October and found it really mediocre. It might be ok for typical Russian $10 per game, though. If you have already played The Witcher and Eschalon and have really nothing to do, it might be worthy of notice too. But it's nothing good compared to those two.
 
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How do you review the demo if you only play 5 mins?
 
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Also you can save and load. I have tried the demo. I question this writer's ability to tie his own shoes much less write an adequate review.
 
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I've played the German demo for this game: I've found the game to be both enjoyable and fun. I did choose to ride on a horse, but the combat on the horse was really not as fun as I thought it could have been.

It is true that wolfes and bandits attack way too much in the game, but that's something that could easily be fixed with an upgrade, I think. I do however think that the main story in this game is pretty good as well as there being more ways than just hack & slash to get the quests in the demo (or game) done.

The fighting takes a litte getting used to in this game, but if you invest in skill upgrades for say strength and dexterity and use a bow to shoot say the wolfes before they attack you, you will get most of the fighting done in a timely manner.
 
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The quests take on a "role-playing" adaption within the storyline...eg: by wearing the thief boots - i could pretend (playing the role) to be a thief (when doing the millers quest) and collude with the thieves without their knowing, this suggests you could walk into a group of bandits with complete immunity - and this i did in the demo.

The wolves and crocodile thingies make for some caution, i killed 20 on foot and sold the skins and teeth to the trader - the trading menu is of the instant type (drag-&-drop) for both buying and selling items. I got beyond 2000 gold but could not buy some of the higher weapons and armour until advancing a level when you are allowed again to visit the arsenal. The demo ends barking on the quest which takes you on board a ship - i played thoroughly for six hours until the demo ending and a game display screen.

PS. You can of course use a horse then dismount and leave it somewhere convenient until later - it shows as a yellow dot on the mini-map.
 
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Yet another reviewer who doesn't deserve the title. If you die in this demo after 5 minutes of playtime it can only mean that Hard to be a God has not been developed for idiots which already makes the title sound interesting to me.

If you play a game until your die for the first time and then you call it crap I think you just shouldn't play. This can happen in any game.

Btw. I have played the german demo and was positively surprised. The game may need some minor tweaking in the GUI and the game mechanics but it's already quite fun in it's actual state.
 
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Vista compatibility?

Was anyone able to run this demo under Vista? It's just crapping out on me immediately after starting up. The first time I was able to hit ESC and get a configuration screen, I just tried raising the resolution and it died. Now I can't even get that far.

Specs: Vista Home Premium, 4GB RAM, BFG 8800GT 512MB, NVidia Driver 169.25, Core Duo 6750. I've got all the usual hotfixes and Vista updates.
 
I played the second russian one with the english fix and had no problem on Vista and you have a higher end system then me. There could be a problem with how the translation was implemented so could be causing your problem but I'm not sure about that.
 
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Were you using 64 bit or 32bit Vista Home Prenium? Chances are the trouble lie with the 64 bits more than with 'Vista' Itself.. Im just assuming you use vista 64 since you have 4gb of ram(even though thats not a complete proof by itself)..but I could be wrong of course.

In any case, have you tried running it either in compatibility mode or Administrator Mode? More than a few games require that if you do use Vista 64.. Im curious if you can get it to work, i've been pondering wether to download it or not :p.

G.
 
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Were you using 64 bit or 32bit Vista Home Prenium?

It's 32-bit. 4GB was as cheap as 3GB and I didn't want just 2. I know I'm crazy gaming on Vista, but not crazy enough to try it in 64-bit! :)

In any case, have you tried running it either in compatibility mode or Administrator Mode?


I tried it with XP-SP2 compatibility, didn't help. Just now I tried it as administrator, no help.

It's started giving me an actual error most of the time. It throws an exception in NTDLL.DLL very early on. According to some vague messages at BluesNews about the demo, it seems that it doesn't support DX10, although they're theorizing the full release might (I kind of doubt it). Apparently this project was started a LONG time ago, an .ini file in the demo has a creation date of 2003 in it. Wouldn't surprise me if it was too much trouble to try and accommodate Vista now.

I've only had this rig a couple of months, but this is the first game or demo that I couldn't run on it..
 
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I played the second russian one with the english fix and had no problem on Vista and you have a higher end system then me. There could be a problem with how the translation was implemented so could be causing your problem but I'm not sure about that.

Odd, perhaps it just doesn't like the DX10 generation video card then, yours is probably older. I don't care enough to go trying different driver versions with it, I have the latest from Dec. 20, which is even WHQL certified, it shouldn't be my problem, but theirs.
 
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Hard to be a god just cannot run on windows vista ultimate 32bit!

Same problem here ntdll.dll problem, crush before options menu.
 
I've finally gotten around to trying the English Demo.
Has anybody experienced a delayed response time in the dialogues?

To clarify:
I approach an NPC and left click which starts off the NPC's dialogue. When he finishes I select my response and hit enter; then I wait 30 - 40 secs before the NPC replies. This happens with each and every dialogue choice.
It's making conversations intolerable.

I'm not experiencing any other technical or performance problems with the demo other than this dialogue issue.

I've checked the ini files however there does not seem to be setting for this nor anything to do with dialogues.

Anyone have suggestions?

Playing under Windows XP Pro, Core 2 Duo 6700, 2gigs DDR 2, Nvidia 7900 GS OC, Audigy soundcard. Fully updated & running the latest DirectX 9.0c release.

Ubbax
 
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I had exactly the same problem with the same video card(well almost, 7900gtx), Ubbax--had to quit--as you're saying, the game just hangs in dialogue. Not everybody has it--we theorized in this thread that it might be the sound files loading...anyway, melvil suggests a right-click will propel you through the dialogue tree, but I haven't had a chance to get back to it and check.
 
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Magerette, Lady of the Lake, to the rescue again :)
Right clicking does indeed propel you through conversations at your own speed.

Thanks for the link to the other thread. I'll post future problems, if any, and final impressions in that thread.

Ubbax
"We don't stop playing because we grow old...
We grow old because we stop playing." -George Bernard Shaw
 
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Always happy to help. :) I just went back and played a bit more of the demo--the right clicking worked fine, and I have no technical issues with it now. Glad you asked, cuz I'd given up, and this looks like it could be a fun game.
 
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how i fight on this game. i know this is in help screens during it but its not work like that. when i click those practise dummies, nothing happends..any button not make actions. so is it bug or?
 
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Do you have your weapon drawn? Once drawn, attack with left mouse button.
 
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well how i drawn my weapon? on helps have not any saying about it :/ i have push several buttons by random but nothing helps..or do i must use 2-3 keys to drawn weapon?
 
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