Lords of Xulima - Two More Reviews

Here are two more reviews for Lords of Xulima that I found on the weekend.

Gamebanshee - No Score

I don't want to make this sound like an insult, but LOX is an okay game. It's a budget title that isn't trying to do anything too out of the box, and it mostly hits its marks. LOX is definitely a grindy game, but as long as you enjoy building up a party and fighting monsters -- and you don't require much in the way of quests or story to encourage you along -- then it can give you dozens of hours of entertainment. LOX is worth a flier at its price.

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Hey Poor Player - 3/5

Ultimately, Lords of Xulima leans perhaps too hard into emulating classic cRPGs. Most of it is well-designed, but at a $20 price point, it’s obviously going to lack the polish of a game like Divinity: Original Sin. It’s not an unenjoyable game by any stretch; it is, however, an incredible niche experience.

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More information.

Poor player - nomen est omen

Well both reviews are not positive. As I like to say not everyone likes what we do.

After all, people are allowed to hold wrong opinions!!

While it's good to see some reviews at last I don't really agree fully with either of them, both have inaccuracies that show they probably didn't play the game for that long.

For me this is one of the best games I've played recently, I'm really enjoying it.

I suspect I'll have played it for well over 100 hours to complete it.

Daniel.

I don't fully agree with them but after 30 or 40 hours it (to me) became a bit of a grind. I was a little annoyed at the amount of forced backtracking and narrow paths (via very strong npc blockers). In the beginning this made sense but after mid-way it got excessive as I found myself hunting for that one missing path I could now traversed. The story was ok I guess but the very end was a bit of a let down.
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Mind you I think the game is worth playing and it does a few things games have not done in a very long time (esp near the beginning) but they could have cut out the last 20 hours and maybe improved some of the mid-way content.

I'm about 70 hours in now, and after 2 restarts to try different party combinations my characters are about level 17. Still really enjoying it though, I'm looking forward to level 30-40 when my characters actually have more spare skill points, at the moment it's quite challenging to get enough skill points each level to raise everything you want.

I'm actually enjoying the game more than Wasteland 2 interestingly. (Not that I didn't enjoy that to)

Daniel.

I have level 20-21 characters right now and my interest in the game is holding strong. My guess is those reviewers either didn't give the game any real effort or are younger and don't enjoy old-school type of games. To each his own, but I think Xulima is polished, well balanced and very nicely done. (I could have done without the Hall of Heroes puzzle, though).

Played this game for a bit. Really like the art style with the 2d graphics. I think I made it to level 4 or 5 and got sidetracked.

Question; Does the world open up more after the first few areas? It feels very linear with exploration; you cant advance to wander a new area until you are strong enough....Does this continue through the whole game?

Yes and no, you can miss out sections easily enough as the game doesn't always point out what to do next, but it will be a challenge unless your party is very strong or you've done optional enemies.

For example there are a load of soliders earlyish on which you should probably avoid however if you buff yourself up enough they can be defeated giving you lots of extra XP etc.

Daniel.

I'm about 65 hours in now on the middle difficulty and have a party at around level 23. Making progress does have a slight grinding quality about it now and it often isn't easy to tell where and what you should be doing at any given time even after reading the journal. However, this is largely a good thing given the exploration and combat are both fun and solid.

Whilst I don't quite find the content as compelling and consistently interesting as Legend of Grimrock 2 which I played to completion without any pause of distraction, I do very much enjoy returning to encounters which were previously too difficult and having some gamer's revenge as it were. This has been a regular theme in my experience of the game so far - returning to the mushroom spitting groups on the second map and eradicating them one by one was quite satisfying.

I sense I still have a long way to go though - Drithius wasn't wrong when he said it was a "loooong game". I think I'll return to the Hall of Heroes area next as where I am at currently, the demons are a little on the brutal side.

Corwin said:

After all, people are allowed to hold wrong opinions!!

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My opinion might be wrong, but I won't change it.
It starts great and then dives into mediocrity that lasts till you get to the last quarter of the game.
IMO Xulima is slighty above average title thus those two reviews don't surprise me.

For above average games I always say, buy, just make sure to find it on -20% at least. For plain mediocre games I'll start suggesting not buying at all. Because we're getting more and more new titles on PC, there is no need to pay for averageness any more just to get your RPG fix.