Lords of Xulima II - About the Sequel

Numatian Games explains the difficulty level of their Lords of Xulima sequel:

The Sequel: More casual or more hardcore?

Greetings!

Recently, there have been some hot discussions in the forum about if the sequel of Lords of Xulima would be more casual to attract more potential buyers or more hardcore to please the old-school fans. So we would like to talk about this topic and clarify this aspect before the rivers of blood flood the forum. 😉

First, don’t confuse Accessible with Casual

A game can be more casual or more hardcore independently of their accessibility level. Lords of Xulima is big, challenging and deep, with lots of mechanisms and possibilities but, it is very accessible. It is very easy and simple to play (move the avatar, talk with NPCs, disarm traps, level up, combat…). We dedicated a lot of work to achieve that level of simplicity of playing. On contrast, old-school games seemed much more hardcore than they actually were because of their obscure and awkward interfaces.

We will always try to make the games as accessible as possible so any player can play it, but with the same level of challenge and depth as they were originally designed.

[…]

So how will the sequel be?

Let’s just say that in Numantian Games, we will always focus on creating deep and challenging games. It is our seal and always will be. So, of course, it won’t be a casual game and it won’t have casual options to disable mechanisms of the game. We will use the same method for casual players: a low difficulty mode, but they will have to play the same game with the same mechanisms (food, traps, encounters…) as any other player.

Indeed, the game will be even more challenging, more open, with more depth, more options to evolve the party, and many more secrets. There will be a special ending that will be a truly hardcore experience 😉 and more special rewards for the higher difficulties.

More information.

Not sure i like the idea of removing save scumming. I can't remember if I used it with the original or not but to be honest this sort of thing should be left to the player.

WOW! Xulima 1 was awesome, especially the superb ending!

Originally Posted by you
Not sure i like the idea of removing save scumming. I can't remember if I used it with the original or not but to be honest this sort of thing should be left to the player.

They were only talking about that in relation to Ironman mode though.

Originally Posted by Stingray
They were only talking about that in relation to Ironman mode though.

They were? I read it to mean they wanted to make the entire game similar to how Ironman mode works now, i.e. only saving in town to reduce save-scumming. Maybe I misread it.

Hmm, checked it again. Seems they are thinking of making Ironman mandatory or adding different options to reduce save-scumming. No problem with me but I don't know if that will appeal to everyone. I'm glad to hear it's going to be even more challenging and deep, though. The mechanics in the first game were really good.

Saving in a crpg should never be limited unless it's a roguelike.

Originally Posted by Fluent
They were? I read it to mean they wanted to make the entire game similar to how Ironman mode works now, i.e. only saving in town to reduce save-scumming. Maybe I misread it.

Hmm, checked it again. Seems they are thinking of making Ironman mandatory or adding different options to reduce save-scumming. No problem with me but I don't know if that will appeal to everyone. I'm glad to hear it's going to be even more challenging and deep, though. The mechanics in the first game were really good.

Yeah, you're right, I mis-read it. One of the worst things an RPG can do, IMO. Definitely wouldn't bother playing it, if they go out of their way to limit saving.

Agree. A player should have a choice. You want to save scum, go ahead. You want to run through with one save, awesome. I don't play at either extreme. I like to progress through a game and roll with the consequences as much as possible but sometimes you just want a re-do or to explore another direction in the game.

hope the studio wont die til then

Originally Posted by JDR13
Saving in a crpg should never be limited unless it's a roguelike.

Definitely my thought as well … I have hated the save-limiting actions (mostly consolitis) for the last 15 years …

Still interested in this one … which makes me want to restart the original

Saving can be limited but there should always be an option to turn it on or off. I play the first Xulima game on Ironman Mode which only lets you save in town and I like it a lot. I've even made the case for games like Elminage Gothic and Xulima to actually add more modes that limit saving and add other restrictions. But as a core feature that you don't have an option to turn off, it will most likely just turn people away.

I promote these options as just that; options. Something you can set at the start of a playthrough but you don't have to turn them on if you don't like them. I think if you give people options for things like this it can make many more types of gamers happy. But I'm also not a game designer so really what do I know?

I am also a fan of a limitation of save scumming. That is either by forbidding to save or not implementing pure savescumming opportunities (pure dice rolls) in the first place.

But I agree that if saving is limited it should be optional in most cases.

Pure dice rolls and the consequences of them would be cool if they were combined with limited saving. It would have to be balanced, but if it were it could be very interesting, IMO.

Just a side note. But yeah, it should be optional.

Originally Posted by you
Not sure i like the idea of removing save scumming. I can't remember if I used it with the original or not but to be honest this sort of thing should be left to the player.

I am a rare person on this board that found Xulima mediocre as an RPG. I felt it was a persistent grind. Kill the boss, move on to the next one.

No one here seems to have experienced what I did with artificial barriers literally stopping you from going to an area the devs felt you are unmatched or not ready for. Yes, it literally stopped you - you had to go back and level up before it would give you access to these areas.

The proper design would have been to simply make it too hard for character levels or put in some unlocking mechanism where the area is only revealed after getting to some port. Then it maintains the illusion of a reward.

It still makes it linear though.

So, this idea of dropping save scumming doesn't surprise me. It seems the devs are insisting you play it their way instead of making it open.

I think everyone who played it experienced that some areas were "gated", but it was just the design of the game. They didn't level-scale anything. Things like putting an Impossible Ogre in the road north of Velegarn was designed to make you figure out where you "had" to go. It's a similar design in the Gothic games, i.e. they are not really "open worlds", they are "gated communities", err, "gated worlds".

If they completely open up the world they will have to employ some sort of level-scaling, which is going to decrease the feeling of hand-placed-everything that the game currently has.

Also, it wasn't 100% linear. There are a few spots that you could explore several areas at once. But in general you had to tackle things in the "correct" order. I don't think every game needs an open world. The maps themselves are quite large and there is a feeling of openness, even if it's somewhat of an illusion. It's not like you're running through corridors with no exploration like some linear RPGs. I never felt cramped by the game and the world map is huge.

Originally Posted by JDR13
Saving in a crpg should never be limited unless it's a roguelike.

As I said, I think a feature like that should always be an option. But limiting saving does have merits. It changes the experience of the game, for some in a good way. Adds a risk/reward element and more tension. Resource management becomes more important and so on. But as a core feature that can't be turned off, it will turn off plenty of gamers.

Also, the game has great exploration even if it is "gated" in some ways. There are many things to find all over the maps and the world map in general. Ancient ruins, lots of those "mini-dungeons" like Witch cabins, Masuoleums, Towers and so on. IMO, the game world was phenomenal for exploring but I'm also heavily partial to the Gothic-style world design. And there are many secrets and things to discover, like the strange and incredibly dangerous "extreme climate" areas, etc..

I agree with you Lucky Day, while I did enjoy playing LoX for a while, I never finished because it couldn't hold my attention. Still a decent game, but to me not more than that.

Originally Posted by Lucky Day
No one here seems to have experienced what I did with artificial barriers literally stopping you from going to an area the devs felt you are unmatched or not ready for. Yes, it literally stopped you - you had to go back and level up before it would give you access to these areas.

I never had to "go back and level up" to access the other areas. There are always areas you can explore and you don't have to grind for levels to access harder levels. In fact, it's not even really possible since random encounters are finite.

If you mean that you wouldn't survive going through toxic clouds to access certain areas without a certain level of heatlh, or can't survive in a very dangerous area due to the crazy Food needed or what not, that is true throughout the game. But that does not mean you go back and grind, it means you explore it "naturally" at a future point. The story never makes you "grind" any more than just playing the game. That is good RPG design, IMO.

There are also interesting world design quirks like difficult spots in a less-difficult map. You can explore Nagira, for example, do the content there, yet the castle there is too hard the first time there so you have to come back later. It makes for a neat feel, IMO.

I didn't have to 'go back' to level up but the progression path is linear. They expect you to go to certain areas in a certain order and if you go down the wrong path death is swift. For my play there was a point in the game will all the 'obvious' paths meant certain death and there was only one path available that allow progression of the story (lower south east). Unfortunately when I had gone down there earlier in the game I thought I reached a dead end and it took a while to realize that there was actually a large missed area. The point is that the other 3 directions available at the time were not remotely possible and it took a small amount of trial and error to find the developer's expect path.

I understand why the game was structured in this fashion (it allowed for control progression of difficulty vs party strength; i.e, tight balance) but it also means that there will occasionally be instant death felt by the party and it takes a bit of trial and error to determine if instant death is due to your error or the logical progression of the game (I can't remember my difficulty level - it was one of the harder levels but not the hardest). I only play the full game once as after the first 20 hours or so it became a grind (the 'wow' moments of the story were pretty dense at the start but very sparse later on).

Originally Posted by Fluent
I never had to "go back and level up" to access the other areas. There are always areas you can explore and you don't have to grind for levels to access harder levels. In fact, it's not even really possible since random encounters are finite.

If you mean that you wouldn't survive going through toxic clouds to access certain areas without a certain level of heatlh, or can't survive in a very dangerous area due to the crazy Food needed or what not, that is true throughout the game. But that does not mean you go back and grind, it means you explore it "naturally" at a future point. The story never makes you "grind" any more than just playing the game. That is good RPG design, IMO.

There are also interesting world design quirks like difficult spots in a less-difficult map. You can explore Nagira, for example, do the content there, yet the castle there is too hard the first time there so you have to come back later. It makes for a neat feel, IMO.