RPGWatch - Lords of Xulima Interview

Welcome back for another interview on RPGWatch. This time we got in contact with Jesús Arribas of Numantian Games. Let's call it a 'retrospective interview' for Lords of Xulima.

Couchpotato: Seems most professional reviews have mostly been positive, but most talk about Lords of Xulima being too hard. Some of our members have even started threads on our forums saying the same thing. Do you agree with them, and how would you respond to them?

Jesús: We sell Lords of Xulima as a "challenging RPG inspired by the classics". So yes, it is challenging and we love that, otherwise it would be a different game.

With that said, LoX has four difficulty modes which change the level of challenge dramatically. That way, players can choose the one that best fits their play style.

In contrast with the old-school classics, Lords of Xulima is not a difficult game to manage. The interface is really intuitive to use and the gameplay mechanics are very easy to learn.

The difficulty comes from [the fact that] the game does not hold your hand. You have the freedom to do what you want and go everywhere from the beginning. Because of that, you can easily find yourself in trouble. Modern players are more used to thinking that they can do everything without consequences because the game is designed and balanced to prevent any wrong decision they can make.

With Lords of Xulma, we did not try to please millions of players. Instead we made it for those that enjoy this different philosophy of gameplay.

I remember the first time I played one of the those modern RPGs with auto-level monsters and treasures, a quest compass, and thousands of repetitive quests / tasks. I thought, "What? Is the RPG genre ruined forever?" Fortunately now, we have many options thanks to the indie studios. Now we have games for all tastes, and that's awesome.

About the press, we are actually very happy with their reviews. We really thought that they would be much [harsher] with us. Really our main concern is the players' response and comparing the data on Metacritic:

- Lords of Xulima, press score 72, users score 87.

- Dragon Age Inquistion, press score 85, users score 58.

How can the opinion of the press be so different than the players?

More information.

Very nice CP. But tell Jesus, that non-mandatory grinding is a respite for me when I need to figure out what to do next.

Jesús: Our main concern was the length of the game. When we added all the new content and played the game from the beginning to the end, we realized it was too long at almost 100 hours of gameplay!

I'm glad he realizes this and hope it means any subsequent title will only be better. I have yet to finish LoX because, despite starting strong, it simply dragged a helluva lot towards the midgame.

Still, I think it deserved more press; very few people in the mainstream RPG crowd knew about it.

Great read thank you
The game is a blast for me, i enjoy it very much

Great interview and I agree with Drithius, I have problems with most games over 60 hours because the repetition of game mechanics becomes tedious after a while. There are certainly exceptions, but these usually have strong stories and extremely interesting and variable game mechanics. I finally game up Elminage:Gothic after 73 hours, and the last 5 or so was pretty much focused on finishing up the main quest dungeon.

incredibly addictive game!, LoX has been my biggest surprise of the last 12 months. It's a very fun game to play. It's not too hard, just challenging when it needs to be. Most rpg gamer I talk to do not understand the fact that it is the challenge that will push to want to level up, to try to get better gear, to try to understand how a new skill work. without it, you just set a game in auto attack and go to sleep. can't wait for there next game!

Wishlisted !

I loved LoX and it was great to play an old school rpg again. My play time was a bit over 100 hours but I like long games. I have recommended this game to a few of my friends and they both love it also. Keep up the good work and would love to see a sequel. Nice interview.

I did finish the game but it was a bit too long and I found it to be a bit of a grind. I did not find it brutal (hard) per sey - i played on normal I htink but i did not like the narrow path that you had to hunt to find and the forced back and forth (across the map).

Like much of RPGwatch it seems, this is another fluff piece with obvious incredible bias. One of the questions starts with "it baffles me that you got some negative reviews…" Really? Truly awful and cringeworthy.

If you don't like the reviews don't read them. If you think you can do better then do the reviews and write them up.

Originally Posted by shadow9d9
Like much of RPGwatch it seems, this is another fluff piece with obvious incredible bias. One of the questions starts with "it baffles me that you got some negative reviews…" Really? Truly awful and cringeworthy.

Hmm. RPGWatch is biased towards CRPGs and the people who make them. Whoda thunk it?

First of all great interview!
I like the questions as well as the answers!
While I liked the game, I was a little disapponted that it didn't continue how went for the first 10-20h.
But it's great to see that they see and accept the reasons, even though they have been mentioned in Early Access a lot of times (but of course you could always say that this is a vocal minority). I was one of they players who felt being pushed to grind, I collected the berries he mentioned / never bought food and I also grinded more than 90% of all zones.
The logic behing that is quite simple actually: If you make a game where everything is limited, except the level you can reach, you will use all the methods to gain the maximum profit (xp/gold) from the ressources you are given. And using a score system in the game, rewarding that gameplay even more, also doesn't make it better.

About the game length: It may be one problem that a 100h game is to long for some people. But I think a special problem for Xulima as well as other RPGs is, that at a certain step you start to trivialize the content. The longer the game, the harder it gets to balance. And that also means that playing efficient (see above) means that you outlevel the content at some point and just steamroll everything.
Might and Magic X had the same problem though. And that game was about half as long.

And while level scaling is hated a lot, it also keeps stuff interesting. Spiderweb games for example is heavily level-gated from how I can judge it.
So if you are level 5 you cannot do a level 15 zone. If you are level 15 in a level 10 zone, you hardly get xp. So in the end you are always more or less in the range of the particular area.

But seeing what they implemented of the feedback of Early Access (which was quite a lot) once they were convinced that it's a good idea, and seeing that they seem to be convinced regarding grinding and game length now, I am confident, that they won't have the same issues with their next game, which - if it's roughly the same type of game - I would back for sure!

And I also hope that they will get more attention from the media now as they already successfully released one game.

One request to Numantian though: I think they should get together with a professional writer. Even if the game doesn't have tons of text - amateurish writing can stain the whole game. Same as the amateurish German Version of Pillars of Eternity makes the game feel like a unfinished mess (the German Version for Xulima was ok though).

@shadow9d9: He didn't mention "some negative reviews" but "the negative" reviews.
Besides of the fact that I don't think an interview needs to be completely objective, this rather sounds to me like the negative Reviews on steam were seen as "they apparently didn't understand the game" by Couchy. Declassifying the "Reviews", not that there was some negative critique at all.

One of the best game in years.

I delight in the tears of those who find it too hard to play.

Originally Posted by you
If you don't like the reviews don't read them. If you think you can do better then do the reviews and write them up.

Usually complainers are too lazy to contribute anything meaningful, sadly. Constructive criticism is a lot more work than just being an ass.

Great interview. Looking forward to receive my retail version of the game in a couple of weeks.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Lords-Xulima…/dp/B00U8RX75U

Originally Posted by Aubrielle
Usually complainers are too lazy to contribute anything meaningful, sadly. Constructive criticism is a lot more work than just being an ass.

Shadow9d9 has never been a great contributor to our site since he joined so it doesn't bother me. Like you said it's much easier being an ass then trying to be civil.

Originally Posted by Humanity has risen!
One of the best game in years.

I delight in the tears of those who find it too hard to play.

Yeah I did not think it was too hard. If you went with speed every lvl game got kinda easy the last half. The first few lvls were hard though and that is just the way I like it.

Thank you for the interview Jesús and CP. Sadly, LoX is one I bought during the Steam winter sale, but haven't got past my current backlog to play it yet. After reading this it has moved up a few notches

Nice interview.

Originally Posted by Drithius
I'm glad he realizes this and hope it means any subsequent title will only be better. I have yet to finish LoX because, despite starting strong, it simply dragged a helluva lot towards the midgame.

Still, I think it deserved more press; very few people in the mainstream RPG crowd knew about it.

I think I agree. I enjoy the gameplay and story in this game but haven't finished it yet. I go back and play a few encounters but have yet to get back into it full swing.

The problem for me is that I can't tell if it's the game or my gamer ADD - I own too many games, flit around a lot, have a huge backlog, and it's incredibly rare for a game to grip such that I obsessively play it to completion in a short period (most recently done with Tomb Raider after buying it for like $5 on sale and thinking I wouldn't like it at all and MMX which I loved despite horrific load times and crap performance)

It's kind of twilight zone to be saying a game is too long?

I also agree this game deserved more buzz - it's a really good game with great mechanics and high production values.