Shadows: Heretic Kingdoms - Fail

[crpgnut]

SHK is a bait game. You start out in a small dungeon and then visit the city of Thole. Thole has several quests, lots of merchants, interesting dungeons and plenty to do. Once you finish Thole however, the whole rest of the game is nothing but map after map of combat. There are very few quests, almost zero NPCs, the story stays in limbo with the narrator meeting you at the end of every combat slog saying Meet me at the end of the next map for your carrot, etc. There also isn't enough loot variety to make loot acquisition fun.

Here is an example of a loot upgrade. You have a piece of armor that gives 5% to piercing, 6% to crushing, and 7% to slashing damage. The next level of armor will increase all of those percentages one point! You'll find rings and amulets that raise health 20 points, but you have over 1000 hp! There isn't a creature in the game that hits for 20 hp or less.

Buyer Beware.

 

[greywolf00]

Where were you before I bought it nut =(

 

[crpgnut]

It's quite fun for a handful of hours, I was sorely disappointed once I left Thole though.

 

[joxer]

crpgnut thanks!
I didn't buy it before, and now I'll skip it in the future too. To be honest, never even heard about this game... Till today.

 

[Nameless one]

Thanks for the warning.I was actually somewhat excited about this game because I liked first game but now I will skip it.

 

[Ripper]

That's the worst - games that draw you in and then flatline.

 

[Warmark]

Thanks for the heads up crpgnut.
I was getting ready to pick this up soon as the first game was a favorite of mine, just bought it again recently on GOG actually.

Too bad as it looks good from a distance

 

[Sacred_Path]

Bought it but haven't really played it yet. I'm not giving up on it until a little longer though... there may or may not be additional content incoming.

 

[crpgnut]

I will say the devs are very actively working on this product, both in updates to the current build and also for Book II, which is basically a free DLC. What hasn't happened yet though, is the filling in of all the missing parts. Thole is great and will give you about 15 hours of good content. After Thole is a mess with map after map full of respawning monsters and very little else.

I've moved on to D:OS as I had burned out on it during the alpha/beta phase. I have 242 hours in Sin and just now started the full game

 

[daveyd]

Thanks for the mini review. Too bad. Sounds a lot like ToEE in that it starts out as a very promising RPG but quickly becomes endless combat... but at least the combat in ToEE is pretty good. I take it the combat in S: HK is nothing special?

Unfortunately, I have found D:OS 's loot system to be very similar to what you described for S: HK

 

[crpgnut]

The combat in SHK can be interesting but there's just so much of it. You control 3 characters in the real world and one demon in the shadow world. If things get hairy in the real world, you can swap to the demon and play in the shadow realms for a little while. The demon is typically best at acquiring essence and that is the primary healing vehicle for the game. Essence is absorbed from every kill and you can use it up to restore your health. There are potions and such too, but they're pretty rare.

 

[khaooohs]

Once you finish Thole however, the whole rest of the game is nothing but map after map of combat. There are very few quests, almost zero NPCs

you're right the werewolf city is like a second thole but there's a long way to get there and really funny fact is the exp reward is like old games where you get more exp for doing quests than killing stuff...

I was almost forced to fight every monster...even those little creatures that gives you a ridiculously low amount of exp and unless I did something wrong killing stuff is insanely tedious...