Urtuk: The Desolation - Impressions

HiddenX

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The TurnBasedLovers checked out Urtuk: The Desolation:

Urtuk: The Desolation Hands-on

THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING URTUK

One thing is certain: Urtuk is not a lucky guy. Why?
Let's start from the beginning.

I don't think we need to say something about his name... "Urtuk" is one of the ugliest name you can imagine for a person, a name that even a minor demon should consider offensive. With a name like that his childhood can't have been easy...

But, as I said above, the name is just the beginning (well, probably not the best one...), because the rest of the story is even worse.
Indeed we know that, at the beginning of the game, our dear Urtuk is imprisoned without a reason and not in a "model prison", but in a gloomy, dirty a stinking cell.
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Enough? Absolutely not, because someone decides to do some sort of evil and obscure experiment with Urtuk's poor body and, mind you, we aren't talking about the "good old torture"; no way, I mean that kind of experiments that make you wish for death!
But, exactly when all seems lost and his death seems near, here comes a little light of hopes in the form of an unexpected help: an old friend breaks in the prison and free Urtuk!
Finally a bit of luck, are you wondering?
Not exactly, I have to give you one last bad news: in the world of Urtuk there are no women...

[...]
More information.
 
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Cool got this today so looking forward to trying...
 
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Let me know if they fixed the level scaling or at least made it more reasonable. I own the game too, but the oblivion style level scaling was what made me stop playing it. But it was an interesting game despite that, and that was something they had promised to address.
 
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The world level scaling has been indeed improved, you won't get the Oblivion style thingy ;). I think I've commited over 30 changes to it over the past 3 months while Urtuk is in EA.

David
 
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Great! I’m definitely due to give it another look then.
 
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Here's my impressions: Awesomeness.
 
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I'm glad I bought this amazing game! Can't wait for the final version around Christmas!
 
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Bought it finally and I'm enjoying the game tremendously. There's something very satisfying about the gameplay flow. It has that "one more battle" pull.

Since BB always gets mentioned. I'm not good at Battle Brothers or something - I can do the combat just fine but I find the game overall not that enjoyable. Dunno if it's too much RNG or too slow of a pace or incredibly bad luck but I've never been able to stick with any it for any length of time over multiple attempts. That battles often feel long and not that exciting and character variety and abilities tend to feel lackluster to me.

In Urtuk, I find the variety in units, the mutations, the mixing mutations for synergies, the traits that get exposed as you play, and tactical elements, how upgrades (to mutations/armor/weapons) work, and just about everything to be more enjoyable. The battles are far more interesting to me. The global modifications (volcanoes, extra mobs appearing, stat effects) that can happen, bounty hunters chasing you - these things add some spice at times. The focus system is solid too - adds some extra oomph to the longer engagements. I like the various hazards and other things going on in the tactical maps too - adds yet more spice.

There's some repetition to the types of encounters you can do (there's repetition in all games) but it hasn't got stale yet and even when you're doing the same kind of "mission" the maps and opponent layouts are random enough to keep things fresh.

Sometimes you get into these huge battles where it's your six, 10 or more allies, taking on 20 or more baddies, and it's crazy. (and crazy fun)

It's also cool that your units are sort of human (flesh eating humans at times? eh...) but you can also get vampires, werewolves, and sometimes other "freaks" from the enemy factions in your retinue. They're a little tougher maintain but I'm digging the vampire I have in my current crew.

Overall the game is just fun, and that's what I'm after more than anything in games these days.

The last thing I'd mention is that there's surprisingly little youtube for this game - most of it is from when the game first hit and most of it is the usual blind let's plays, and unless you want to watch dozens of hours of someone clueless playing to see what all the game has going on, you're not seeing it all vs playing it. I tend to prefer to paying over watching anyways. I think after watching youtuber #6 start off a blind play thru and playing poorly I couldn't take anymore and had to buy it and play it myself.

I'm glad I bought this amazing game! Can't wait for the final version around Christmas!

The dev has said the game is 99% complete so that's a lot of waiting for potentially very little. That said, I've seen plenty of devs say this kind of thing and make more than 1% of additions/adjustments.

I haven't really noticed any bugs (I'm sure there are some) and the game feels really good to me - nothing is lacking or missing that's obvious. I guess the final boss or encounter isn't in yet or something like that but that's a LONG ways off for me. I've restarted several times and I've only just got into the 2nd zone map (which has plenty of differences from the first map) for the first time.
 
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