Xulima: Not for the modern gamer.
Let me explain. The game is very forgiving on the lower difficulties and significantly less so on the higher difficulties. On all of them however it is at least somewhat complex, requiring some degree of planning and common sense from you. There are no green arrows that tell you where you should go next. At the same time it's not entirely without direction, as NPCs will tell you about other regions of the world. Many call this game linear because "Titanic" encounters block all the "incorrect" paths. First, those are blocking shortcuts and not paths. Second, most of them are defeatable early anyways even on the highest difficulty allowing for a great deal of sequence breaking at least on par with that of a Souls game.
The second thing a lot of people have trouble with is the presentation. Yes, the graphics are simple and the animations a bit clunky. This is an indie game made on a tiny budget and one of the very few Early Access success stories that exist. Sacrifices must be made. Likewise the story is fairly generic... this game is focused on the game mechanics first and everything else second and as a result the core game is solid.
The third thing is the difficulty. As I mentioned the low difficulties are very forgiving. A lot of modern gamers will struggle even there as even the "Casual" difficulty still demands something from you and most modern games do not. Exercise even a little forethought however and you'll be right at home on the middle difficulty for your first run and either after completing it, or hitting the halfway point and finding it easy you can then charge right back in on the highest difficulty and complete that. And then if that's STILL easy, some crazy guy (me) is making a mod that makes it harder still. I've easily gotten 450 hours out of this game and I am nowhere near done with it. Forget all that pretentious generic crap, this is the best game I've tried all year.
Am about 15 hours into this and love it. Some of my recent favorites include Wastland 2, Divinity: Original Sin, Skyrim, Paper Sorcerer,Fallout 3 and Fallout 3 NV, and Xcom. After hearing about it on some forum I almost overlooked it because of a review and how slow movment was in a trailer which you can change by the way. I think the game could have used some more publicity but in any case its loads of fun and so far not that difficult to get into. Hope to see a Lords of Xulima 2 !!!!
Lords of Xulima is strictly for the more masochistic of gamers. Its merciless difficulty that only exponentially spikes the further you play should come as a dream come true for fans who like the ultimate in ball-kicking.
Lords of Xulima is ugly, some of its elements are too simplistic and the story is poor but you rarely find an RPG that tests you intellect to such a degree, making you count every coin you spend, thoroughly examine every piece of equipment, keep track of food supply, endlessly tackle puzzles, carefully manage characters’ stats, look for alternate routes and find out how to beat different monsters. [08/2015, p.69]
Veteran players will be pleased, the others not so much. Xulima’s tribute to the old times means mostly the extreme difficulty and uncompromising approach in every detail. [Issue#249]
A fantastic master piece oldchool RPG:
+ 150 hours of oldschool style gameplay
+ Total freedom, the only limit is the quality fo your party.
+ Brilliant HD isometric graphics. No pixelation.
+ Funny minigames and riddles (lockpicking, disarm traps, etc.)
+ Turn based combat in 3D simulated screen.
+ Perfect sound effects and music.
+ Great writing.
+ Hardcore but playable without frustation.
+ Rewarded exploration.
+ Many secrets.
+ challenging extra bosses in secondary quests.
+ many classes to build your party, but you must build it carefully to make it useful.
+ Food system addition.
- For some people will be too hardcore, but you know where are you entering.
- More people to talk in towns.
- More types of weapons and armors.
- At some time you'll ended ;-).
- Food will be a problem for some tu
The best classic rpg from Wizardry VIII.
After The Video Review: Lords Of Xulima
Hours Played: 12 hours
Price: $19.99 USD
I normally do this anyways and I had a lot to say so I just kept it in this format.
The Good:
Old school style with new school mechanics:
it has kind of an old school feel of ultima in a way but it’s supported by new age combat and graphics.
Interesting combat game-play:
basically if your enemy is using a melee weapon and he’s to the far left of the screen he can’t attack the far right without moving first, which costs half a turn to move. In addition to that it’s all turn based combat with weapons and skills that can stun and while not as comprehensive as say final fantasy x and it’s turn based system it’s still pretty good.
The voice overs are pretty good:
often the proper voice can make or break a game, but they pretty much nailed it here the narrator and the voice of god sound very appropriate and usually are dipping with dramatic feel to it.
The environments are pretty well detailed and everything looks good:
it actually a good thing to be a developer on Steam and not have your game look like it was done in MS Paint and here it looks really well done, with good detail in pretty much everything you encounter and every where you go.
It has a Steam workshop:
there is too many mods and for the most part they haven’t done too much in terms of really outlandish stuff, but it’s always nice to have.
The Bad:
The outright necessary grinding:
I’m not kidding here you WILL grind in this game you WILL kill every enemy in every area if you want to continue on your quest there is no maybe here.
but wait there’s more! the enemy's are finite and you get a bonus for killing all of them that you will need, so you LITTERY have to go everywhere to fight every enemy.
The lack of skills:
the ones they do have are more trial and error and outside of the divine summoner class it feels like most characters really don’t have a lot of skills in the beginning and as they level up they still feel really under powered.
Complete lack of explanations:
most of the skill icons you can’t click on so you don’t know what they do same with the icons on the weapon stat’s, even concepts like when poison or bleeding will affect you is never explained, Also it never gives you a look at what skills you character will receive way down the line so you're never sure what you're building towards.
Often times completely unrealistic with its difficulty:
somehow even after you take down nearly EVERY enemy in EVERY part you can go in a map if you didn’t build you didn’t min/max your characters correctly then congrats you get to start all over again from the beginning of the game.
it has such an unforgiving difficulty that even if you have been playing CRPG’s your entire life you're still going to lose, that being said however you're probably going to restart to get your revenge (after you buy a new keyboard).
The DLC feels like a slap in the face:
I swear it like the devs when they making them were like “aww is it too hard for you? that’s ok you can just spend more of your money too make it allll better.”
It has a weird stutter when you run:
this could just be my computer but it has a really weird jerky stutter when your character starts running again it could be just me but it’s weird.
The Summary:
This game just is not approachable by anybody who isn’t direly serious about needing a challenge in a CRPG and Dark Souls & Bloodborne just aren’t your thing, everybody else just needs to stay away from this title because the only thing you’ll find with this game is frustration and a lot of broken keyboards, but if you can make it past all that there is a good game here albeit one I can’t recommend but a good game all the same.
First 10 hours with that game are like "wow, it's 1998 again and I'm exploring new Baldur's Game for the first time". But after that, you come to the town looking exactly as the first one and you have to do... almost exactly the same things. Just in different locations. So, this game is awesome, but it's getting boring and schematic. I really liked this game, but to be fair, I cant' rate it higher than 7, because it started to bore me after first few hours and finally I couldn't even finish it.
The in-game isometric visuals are ok. Exploring and gathering mechanics are actually fine, if a little primitive. The writing is mediocre at best. Instead of creating something unique, the game just combines all of the most tired fantasy cliches. Also, it's one of those games that don't understand that creating a bunch of weird-sounding deity names and toponyms does not equal good fantasy writing. The Lord Of The Rings, Dragon Age and Dark Crystal didn't become fantasy genre icons because they had weird-sounding names and titles, but because they all had some amazing stories and characters at the heart. And this game has neither the story, nor the characters to speak fondly of.
There is no role-playing in this allegedly role-playing game. I understand that we play as a set character that comes with a history and a personality, but, damn, even small choices would make a difference. Consider Geralt of Rivia, also a set character, and how many options did he have during the Witcher trilogy. The writers didn't even bother to make a protagonist interesting, much less secondary and episodic characters.
The quests are the most generic missions you could ever imagine. Kill X amount of rats, collect Y amount of herbs, etc.
However, the biggest letdown is the combat. If the rest of the game was at least serviceable, the combat is frankly just embarrasing. This is some browser game level gameplay. Why couldn't they just keep the combat isometric, like the rest of the game? Were those cheap-a*s 3D models from 2002 really worth it? The combat itself is very primitive and makes something like King's Bounty Legend feel (and look) like a masterpiece in comparison.
All in all, I wouldn't exactly call this game absolutely soulless, but it's so lacking in basically every aspect, from sounds and visuals to story and characters to actual gameplay and player engagement, I really don't understand why they even bothered with this 60+ hour open world RPG.
This tedious, linear grindfest celebrates its flaws by hiding them with the tired "it's meant to be hard" and "it's meant to be old-school" clichés. Most of the positive reviews were written mere days after release, which is a red flag for a game as big as LoX.
The game purports to have 100 or more hours of gameplay, but all of that gameplay lacks much nuance or variety. The first couple of hours are the only fun hours. It boasts an "open world", but in reality, where you can go and what you can do is strictly limited by what level you are and what you have already done. The quest and dialogue options are pointless, usually not even giving you the illusion of control.
Poorly written quests and dialogue contain quest information that you have to piece together, so just breezing past all of it is not always an option. While monsters aren't level-ramped, the in-game economy is, so as your level goes up, your costs go up, too, even for what should be fixed costs, like food. Given how important food is in this game and how little of it you can carry, and how much pointless walking there is in this game, the game feels like it punishes you for success. Having the right mix of character types is critical, but this is hampered by having the main character loaded with essential support skills that if you don't pick will make the game pointlessly difficult. The tradeoff is that if you do choose these skills, the character is nearly useless in combat.
The items boil down to a dozen or so basic items, the only difference being the amount of stat bonuses they give you. There are no weapons or armor which, for instance, will make you use a given character differently. The entire game feels very incremental, and there is never a satisfying feeling at getting a new item - it's just always a matter of trivial increase, over and over.
The game is profoundly buggy, which sometimes results in over-paying the player for items, locking up fights before they start, or skipping key fights.
The balance is completely out of whack, with the game being at once very linear in what it expects you to do next, but very arbitrary in where it has put the next place you need to do it. This often results in your party finding itself in an area where every fight is a 100% chance of losing until you find the area you're "supposed" to be in. This gives the lie to the claim that there is anything truly non-linear or open about the game.
Skip this celebration of everything bad about the worst RPGs of the 1980s and 1990s. You can find better for your time and money.