Antharion: Impressions thread

Greetings Watchers,

Whilst I didn't back it on Kickstarter, I did pick this cute little game up essentially due to its coverage here. The game-play is nice and basic and it plays like a hybridised party-based Eschalon, with obvious nods to both Spiderweb's Avernum and even traces of Ultima's 3-6 in the exploration. I noted Fluent's videos on the game on Steam (kudos for those incidentally!) but haven't fully investigated them as yet eschewing spoilers in quest/dungeon content.

I'm about 10 hours in and have reached a very pleasant level 9. There's an immediacy to the experience which makes it relaxingly cheerful to play, the soundtrack often showing a strong Morrowind influence. I'd even make special note to the visceral sound fx, which give the player satisfying feedback in combat.

Amusingly, some of the graphics remind me of an old online game that my little brother used to play years ago - Habbo Hotel; and somewhat tangentially, there's even an odd little quest involving hobos and whether they should live or die which was certainly different.

However, the writing is probably the weakest link so far, as it is a little juvenile and silly but the feeling of exploring the world, doing quests is still fairly compelling.
I'd certainly recommend it even at this point to indie rpg fans and players of party-based and turn based strategy games. The turn-based combat is straight forward and not particularly deep, but I do like the sense of discovery in finding out where one's party is capable of going. Getting splattered and torn apart by seagulls and crabs for instance in the early levels was especially hilarious!

I went for a party consisting of a relatively standard Warrior/Archer/White Mage/Black Mage and I like having to be conscious of a range of skills spread amongst the group. Admittedly it takes time to get used to percentile spell-failures in combat which will turn off some players, but I'm hoping that with careful stat management over time (wis/int) the impact of this will become lessened.

At this point I would say picklock is an essential skill and I'm enjoying dipping into alchemy and hoarding ingredients for the future. I can tell it's going to take quite a few more hours to develop my characters and fully enjoy the content.

Anyway, just thought I'd share my fun relaxing time with the game so far and see if other Watchers have played/are playing. I find myself more drawn to this than to DA:I at the moment, whose combat I'm really struggling to enjoy.
Ahh well, there's such an elegance and purity in simplicity sometimes.

I enjoyed the game very much and did give to the Kickstarter. I did not finish it but I think I will replay it because they were still patching it when I played the game. If I remember correct the first few patches changed some things and I wanted to wait till that was done.

I played for around 17 hours and thought it was very well done and they delivered what they promised in my mind.

Cool to hear that you backed it, Hastar. Can you remember what party you played with and what the last main quest you last played was? I must admit that I didn't research the status of prospective patches for the game, although I've had no issues to speak of with my game.

I've only done the quest to retrieve the Codex text from the mine so far and haven't made it as yet to the location for the next main quest. Slow and steady like the snail as they say....

I'm very keen to know whether I can justify making two pure class casters without giving them much in the way of melee skills. Should be interesting to see.

I played it too. The game gets old before you will finish, but I think I made it into the 20's before I got bored. It's definitely worth the monies.

Yeah, I think I read your report/thread awhile back 'nut. Your experience is probably a good cautionary note for me to not overdo it and indulge too much too quickly with the game.
If I spread the play time out well enough, I should be able to keep going until it's complete. That's been the case at least in my time with Spiderweb and Basilisk games.

I made a standard party I am pretty sure. 1 warrior 1 bowman 1 cleric and 1 mage. I got to the winter lands up north and did a good amount of the dungeons. I also cleared out the swamp lands down south. I agree with crpgnut, I burned myself out and should have played in 1 hour sittings instead of 5 and 6 Another game came out and that was the main reason I stopped playing.

I will replay it again and I really enjoyed character advancement and the combat. Exploration was pretty good also. That covers most the bases of what I like in crpg's.

Well, in Antharion's defense, I restart games several times, trying to find my perfect mix. Some of my burnout was due to taking 7 or 8 parties through the first few parts.

Yikes, well, I definitely won't be doing that - as I tend to rely on my instincts and build/role-play naturally, rather than look to power-game through the experience.

I played AntharioN a bit when it first came out. Made some YouTube Let's Play videos for it, which got a few views.

Fun game. I enjoyed it. Only reason I stopped playing was RPG overload, which is usually the reason I stop playing any RPG. So many games, so little time.

I enjoyed the hand-crafted feeling of the world and all the nooks and crannies to find. Also delightful to see several optional dungeons in the early areas alone with tougher encounters and loot to find.

Yes, I acknowledged your videos in my original post. Good job sir. I appreciate the coverage on the lesser known indie games.

I try to cover somewhat lesser known RPGs. So, thanks.

I also recommend this game to fans of Morrowind, as I had similar vibes after playing a bit of the game.

I finished Antharion. The beginning is great, but after about 15 hours, you can see that there is very little new. The dungeons all feel the same. The later towns are underdeveloped, and the quest density goes way down. And the ending is so poorly done its pretty much non-existant. That is to say, there are three possible endings, but the game gives you no feedback that it is finished. I still think its fun enough to play, especially on sale, just be aware that it goes downhill near the end.

Thanks Forgottenlor, some good things to be made aware of in your post.

If I'm being analytically critical, I do think it is inferior overall to Eschalon and other games in its genre, (notably anything by Jeff Vogel that I've played) It is a little too simplistic in combat with most fights playing the same way. Archery also feels slightly over-powered and the dungeons are a little one-dimensional.

Still, I'm now around level 12 and are on to the third main quest. My party is getting whopped by certain encounters, so I'll be backtracking to various areas I haven't been for awhile, before heading up to Northwynd. There is still a great deal of character development to be done which should keep it interesting enough for me to continue.

Having explored a little more thoroughly in the Blackmire province, I found a couple of little dungeons and cleared them out. In one of them I found a hard locked chest yet at 4% chance, managed to open it, breaking just 5 picks.

In it - I found a one handed weapon entitled "Joxer's Conundrum". It yields bonuses to pickpocket and picklocking. I know he said he never backed the game, http://www.rpgwatch.com/forums/showthread.php?t=24200, but this is pretty coincidental, no?

Pessimeister said:

Thanks Forgottenlor, some good things to be made aware of in your post.

If I'm being analytically critical, I do think it is inferior overall to Eschalon and other games in its genre, (notably anything by Jeff Vogel that I've played) It is a little too simplistic in combat with most fights playing the same way. Archery also feels slightly over-powered and the dungeons are a little one-dimensional.

Still, I'm now around level 12 and are on to the third main quest. My party is getting whopped by certain encounters, so I'll be backtracking to various areas I haven't been for awhile, before heading up to Northwynd. There is still a great deal of character development to be done which should keep it interesting enough for me to continue.

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I really liked that Antharion had the whimsical atmosphere of say Might and Magic 5, and not the dark and dreary atmosphere of Eschalon or Avernum, though I really like both of those series. But, I agree the fights all play out similarly, and there simply is far less npc interaction or quest variety than in Avernum or Eschalon.

In my opinion Antharion could remind games like M&M series also because the design focus on a very fast paced game. It's particularly noticeable for combats. I don't remind have played party combats on a grid as much fast paced. They used few tricks for that but only some are a relative dumbing down in comparison with a more classical design.

For a combats comparison with Eschalon, Avadon, last Avernum remakes:
- Eschalon Book combats are single character and just can't compare to a party based CRPG, and Antharion is no exception, and much better on that aspect than Eschalon series.
- Avadon party is reduced to 3 and this definitely influences significantly the depth. And myself I consider the blocking mechanism as failed and reducing choices for not much benefit. Overall I wouldn't say combats are much deeper than those of Antharion, just somehow deeper.
- For Avernum remakes, many more modern design are added like cooldown, plenty special attacks not related to spells, few dynamics attacks (attacks mixed with movements from character or forced to enemies), some more. Overall Antharion is more old school and just can't compare fully.

But one question I would have is did you get bored by Anthation combats? Myself I never get bored by them (unlike some common dungeons exploring) and I can't say that for Eschalon Book series nor for Spiderweb games. When I realized it I started wonder why.

- A major aspect is the ratio of combats depth / combats duration is very good in Antharion.
- The very fast paced aspect allows quickly ignore a pointless combat or a combat you do at too high level.
- If you don't build a party focusing on exploiting a small set of tactics the combats show a quite good depth.
- The game offers grinding abilities with many optional areas (no respawn) and difficulty levels, so you can exploit it and then ignore most of the finesses at your disposal.
- There's a nice set of design favoring choices during combats and favoring terrain importance allowing make combats different.

It would be too long to explain the last point so I won't explain I'll just list key points:
- A coherent set of design from uncommon aggro, switching positions, blocking enemies and using obstacles.
- Switching mechanism that can be exploiting from a party point of view, that is you can use opportunities for using switching to move a character closer to a special enemy, or to move a character more in the back.
- Managing chance and ranges for your characters but also enemies.
- A large set of spells for controlling enemies with each different strong and weak points.
- Various buffer/debuff that can change a balance and change the fate of a combat.
- Some resistances aspects you need take care of.
- A set of AOE with different tactical usages.
- Some special spells offering special tactical abilities.

For the writing aspect, I consider Avadon series > Antharion > Eschalon series > Avernum series. But I admit it's because I enjoy particularly concision and discrete effects.

And eventually this is a counter reaction, the more isn't the better in writing. I'm tired of current tendency on that in modern CRPG. More of tedious reading is reading more tedious, not better damit. Also concision is very special in games, it's more important in this context to know tell the same thing with the fewer words, and strip out any parts boring to read, a text filler is a total boredom. Put your boring lore in some pdf or in some in-game books a player can easily skip, or learn make lore fun to read like in The Witcher 1 encyclopedia.

Antharion writing quality is all about concision and discretion, that's it, nothing else. Writing concision is a major quality in video games (alas it seems forgotten by many modern CRPG that seem sell text by weight, the more the better, sigh) and Antharion is definitely above the melee on that aspect for indie context (pro on that are probably to search among JRPG writers alas their deliberate abuse of clichés isn't a good writing choice). There's some emotions and some humor, both with discretion but for me it's with finesse, for some other it won't be noticed at all. One good aspect is multiple little echoes from NPC of your past choices or actions in other parts of the world.

But there's only few characters that benefit of a bit more focus, overall it's clearly a weak aspect. If there's some effort on plot, it's not that good and rather short, and overall not much ambition had been put here, serious subjects are too common and covered too quickly. And the main story is partially destroyed by a final half well done, it depends of one of the three ends you choose (or could do), some work a bit better, or a bit less bad.

For Eschalon series, fairly good efforts on the plot and attempts half well done on emotions and suspense construction, but overall weak writing quality, with some improvement from book 1 to 3, but at end still a bit weak.

For Avernum series, even if the dev try polish the writing at each remake, it still suffers of some major weaknesses, on building emotions, characters, suspense, efforts to grab the player with the writing. The good points, solid very clear writing, efforts to cover some serious subjects, some efforts on plots, but in my opinion they aren't good enough to counter balance the weak points.

Avadon series is showing a significant effort of dev to improve the weak aspect of his writing, more efforts on building emotions and characters, try build more on suspense and plot evolutions to grab player curiosity, some more. It's still someone in a learning curve and too shy with emotions, but in context of indie CRPG it's starting to reach a quality above the melee.

Pessimeister said:

Having explored a little more thoroughly in the Blackmire province, I found a couple of little dungeons and cleared them out. In one of them I found a hard locked chest yet at 4% chance, managed to open it, breaking just 5 picks.

In it - I found a one handed weapon entitled "Joxer's Conundrum". It yields bonuses to pickpocket and picklocking.

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That is interesting indeed.

I'm surprised it didn't include a bonus against respawning bears.

JDR13 said:

That is interesting indeed.

I'm surprised it didn't include a bonus against respawning bears.

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Well since it is his Conundrum, it should spawn a bear each time it kills a non-bear monster

I noticed he thumbed Forgottenlor's post; maybe he trolled Orphic Studio's forums or something about some random design element so they decided to immortalise his confusing posting style by making him a real conundrum?

(I did slay a gigantic population of Polar bears in the north - thankfully, they don't respawn…)

The game remains relaxing and fun to play and I've put in some considerable hours over the long weekend to make some progress. My party has reached level 20, I've now bought a ship in true Ultima 4-5/Avernum fashion and are currently doing some further exploration up the coastlines before taking on the quest to reforge the sword of ascension in Northwynd.

The area effect spell I'm leaning towards most is probably Poison cloud; not a huge fan of the sweeping fire spells. The bog standard firebolt is still very reliable, as is cone of cold if your front line needs a quick break from the action. I've got almost all of the white magic spells now, but haven't touched any Gray magic.
The last array of quests down south had some longer, more gruelling fights, so I'm looking forward to the next section for more of the same.

I also recommend this game to fans of Morrowind, as I had similar vibes after playing a bit of the game.

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To be honest, apart from the Morrowind influence in a couple of the tracks in the soundtrack that I mentioned earlier, I don't feel any similarity whatsoever to the Morrowind mood. That said, the contrast between the surface level cute aesthetics and the visceral blood and guts evoked in the sound effects, is quite amusing.

Thanks to Sanglor for the detailed posts; I'll have to respond to a few points before I get to the end of the game.