Depths of Peril - Review @ GameTunnel

Jay 'Rampant Coyote' Barnson has penned a review of Depths of Peril for indie gaming site, GameTunnel. The recommendation is "Buy" and here's a grab:

First of all, let’s talk about the world. In most RPGs, you’ve got a world full of things that need to be done by you, the hero. The quests don’t change much, and they will wait for you, the player, to get around to them – even if it takes years. The game will wait for you.

Depths of Peril is not that kind of game. The world changes as you play. Threats to the city build up if you – or one of the other factions – don’t stop it. An uprising of a particular monster type in an area, if not stopped, will give rise to a very powerful (and hard-to-kill) “boss” that rises to take leadership. If you (or the other covenants) don’t take care of this specific foe in a timely manner, it will gather together a kind of “posse” of powerful henchmen that will make it even more difficult to eliminate. Leave this new “super-group of evil” alone long enough, and they will unleash their evil plans upon the city – which could make life there very difficult for the NPCs, all the covenants, and your character.

More information.

I haven't been following this game that close. But if your actions can cause that kind of consequence that is really dynamic. Could that be what some critics miss or aren't aware of?

I'm just wondering if my criticizing of game reviews on the one hand, but writing reviews on the other, is an example of putting my money where my mouth is, or just blatant hypocrisy.

Either way - while the dynamic quests that work this way aren't necessarily earth-shattering in their implementation, neither was the virtue system in Ultima IV, which was far less impressive (technically) than a modern-day faction system in other RPGs. But it doesn't make it any less cool.

I think one of the tricks with DoP is that you need to play it for a bit to see these elements. You can run through the whole demo as if it was Diablo. And --- to be honest --- I didn't even recognize the causal relationships the first time I played through. I think my first impression was, "Oh, man, how stupid… they re-used this monster's name for another quest!"

I'm sure some critics do miss this but to be honest, DoP has been quite favourably reviewed in general.

@Coyote - putting your money where your mouth is. But I would say writing a review for a game you sell is a much grayer area - although I'm also sure the sales are inconsequential in the scheme of things and I don't doubt your integrity.

Yes be trying DoP, I enjoyed the review, good work.

Dhruin - True enough. Which is why I submitted the review on a site I don't have any affiliation with. My hypocrisy only goes so far, I guess. And hopefully that doesn't put me on any grayer ethical ground than that of a review site which receives its income from publisher advertising for the same games they review.

But I'll let the review stand on its own merit.

I can't pretend to be unbiased (I call myself an "indie games evangelist", after all), but I think I can be reasonably objective.

I hope my comment didn't sound accusatory - it was just an observation following your comment about review hypocrisy. It was a good review and again, I wouldn't question your integrity.

Originally Posted by RampantCoyote
I'm just wondering if my criticizing of game reviews on the one hand, but writing reviews on the other, is an example of putting my money where my mouth is, or just blatant hypocrisy.

Only if your reviews had the same flaws you generally criticise, no?

@Dhruin - nope, I think I took it in the spirit in which it was given. It's a valid point.

@Brother None - my criticisms are more towards the industry at large than individual reviewers. In fact, that's part of my beef - individual reviewers are getting anonymized, marginalized, and lost in meaningless aggregate scores.

Originally Posted by Lucky Day
I haven't been following this game that close. But if your actions can cause that kind of consequence that is really dynamic. Could that be what some critics miss or aren't aware of?

I'm not positive that exact quoted sequence can happen in the game, but it is very close either way. It won't happen the same way each time either. It depends on what you do, what the other covenants do, and some random factors.

If you quell the uprising quickly none of the rest of that will happen. Well at least that time. Or you might have a unique monster and one of the other covenants might kill him and end that threat. Or when the uprising leads to an attack on the town, while they are there they might poison the water supply, start the plague, or cause some other kind of havok. There are a lot of possibilities, so each time it is different.

I think most of our reviewers have noticed the dynamic world stuff. I do think the more they have noticed, the higher our review scores have gotten though.

So are the plagues caused by failing to kill an enemy earlier? I assumed those were purely random.

The one that blew me away the most was when one such villain that I'd failed to stop in one of the earlier quests launched a siege with explosive attacks landing throughout the city. Probably the most dramatic of the conclusions to those kinds of chains.

Originally Posted by RampantCoyote
So are the plagues caused by failing to kill an enemy earlier? I assumed those were purely random.

The one that blew me away the most was when one such villain that I'd failed to stop in one of the earlier quests launched a siege with explosive attacks landing throughout the city. Probably the most dramatic of the conclusions to those kinds of chains.

Plagues can start both ways. Sometimes they start randomly, but they can also be started by town attacks or when a unique monster attacks the town.

I like the siege attacks also.