lurker
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Re: Games Discussion Thread
With Eternal Crusade's publisher-mandated release date coming tomorrow, the least I can do is a thorough review of what works, what doesn't work, and everything in between. I'll probably be slightly modifying this when the release patch is launched and the character wipe triggers for that, but hey, consider this mostly my final thoughts on it.
With Eternal Crusade's publisher-mandated release date coming tomorrow, the least I can do is a thorough review of what works, what doesn't work, and everything in between. I'll probably be slightly modifying this when the release patch is launched and the character wipe triggers for that, but hey, consider this mostly my final thoughts on it.
First off, let's get some obvious history out of the way. Originally, the original team for EC first drew up some hype for this game via making what was basically a wishlist of features, that essentially boasted that they were hoping for a Planetside IN THE GRIM DARK FUTURE. Unfortunately, a lot of the original team was moved around past this point, and to make matters worse, Bandai-Namco, the publisher for the game, put it's foot down and demanded a release date despite the fact the game was still technically in an alpha state. Credit where it's due, the EC team has knuckled down and prepped as best as they can for the release.
I'm not going to use this review to shame on the original idea or other such things. I'm going to focus on what the game is, and whether what we got is fun or not.
STORY
The story is more or less an excuse plot, so thin that I can't even say it's trying to rip off Dawn of War. In short, the various factions have some mysterious reason for trying to hold onto the planet Arkhona, leading to the assault by Chaos Space Marines, Eldar, and Orks with the Space Marines coming to the planet's aide. To make things better, a Tyranid Hivefleet is descending on the planet, infesting many of the underground barracks and facilities for now, but the threat of them boiling up onto the surface is still there.
CHARACTER CREATION AND PROGRESSION
When you first start the game, you start by choosing your faction, followed by your subfaction in the main faction. This mostly dictates cosmetic and taunt flair, so feel free to focus on which one you think is coolest or more interesting. After this point, you can jump into the garrison to brush up on your skills, head into the game, or take a look at your advancements and loadouts. I highly suggest using the game's pre-made loadouts for a bit prior, as they come pre-loaded with modifications, trinkets, and other things to make your first few rounds easier.
Speaking of loadouts, let us discuss progression. Your progression is split into two resources: Experience that grows your rank and grants you Advancement Points, and gainable tokens, which most races call Requisition but Orks refer to as Teef.
Advancement Points are used to unlock various pieces of wargear that you use on your loadouts, from grenades and support items, to Trinkets that offer smaller buffs and Wargear items that drastically increase your stats. Each piece of gear does bring itself Loadout Point costs, which most classes only are able to hold around 1000 Loadout Points worth of gear.
Your Requisition and Teef, meanwhile, are used to enhance your arsenal of weapons via the store. You're able to direct-buy the standard version of a weapon via the use of your resources, or you have various degrees of crates, that will grant you modifications, unique weapon variants, and other useful items.
In addition, however, the shop allows you access to things you can buy with Rogue Trader Credits, a cash-shop currency. This cash-shop currency is used primarily for cosmetic items for your character's visual look, however there is variant weapons you can purchase with RTC to grant you a type of weapon with much more unique visual look. It should be noted that the RTC weapons are built 'pre-modded' however, so you are unable to tweak these weapons like those you can pick off the shelf, and these weapons don't feature any statline different than average for modified weapons. The big draw, is, again, appearance and look, and who doesn't like a plasma cannon with a bunch of warp-tainted flesh stretched over it?
GAMEPLAY
At it's current state, Eternal Crusade is an asymmetrically-balanced team shooter, most of it's gameplay focused along capture location gamemodes. Each faction plays slightly differently, with a major focus of some kind with them. Space Marines and Chaos Marines, for example, are somewhat similar, though Space Marines are more tech-based and focus on general enhancement, while Chaos uses dark sorcery and chaos marks to grant them bonuses as well as maluses. Eldar, with their focus on Aspects, are highly specialized, one of the smallest targets in the game and highly mobile, but don't get nearly as many improvements to survivability., while the Orks are a bit haphazard with their linear growth, have some accuracy issues but can hit hard when they do, and have a unique WAAAGH! buff that triggers if the match goes on too long. In general beyond that, many of the factions share similar elements: Chaos and Eldar both have sorcery as their support class, while Orks and Marines focus on the use of healing vials from Apothacaries and Mad Doks, all but the Eldar's air assault class all have simularities, and so on and so forth.
In general, EC's time to kill is surprisingly short considering the 40k mythos, however I don't got much of an issue with it. Remember, every time they wanna say how awesome something can cause damage, they tend to compare it to Ceramite, aka the same material Imperial power armor is constructed of. However, anyone not playing as an Eldar will probably find themselves annoyed at vehicles quickly early on- Eldar start off with Dark Reapers armed with a decently-damaging launcher and Fire Dragoons with meltaguns, which can cause quick damage to vehicles if given the chance, whereas most races will have to rely on their tanks until the faction gets ahold of a few spare lascannons or meltas of their own. Quad-Guns will probably annoy you early on similarly, as these map-placed turrets will mince through even a Predator or Trukk pretty damn fast. Luckily, you tend to only see those on siege-based maps, and I expect they will become less of a concern once advanced weapons filter in to loadouts over the weeks after launch.
Also of note is the Tyranid hive gamemode, which while it is not the main focus of the game right now, it is enjoyably fun, essentially a dungeon crawl facing off against seas of termigaunts and hormigaunts with Warriors acting as bosses. It certainly has room to grow, but it's enjoyable as a distraction from the tug-of-wars of the major gamemodes.
IMMERSION
From an outward view, it does kinda show it's original design choices with how the maps are built. Many of these facilities have roads for vehicles built in a very Planetside/MOBA mindset of obvious vehicle lanes, and the current selection of maps all feel like they come from the same general area of the planet's surface, making it feel like that if you could reach the top of the mountaints you'd see another of the maps. On the other hand, each facility you fight in is full of little details, from strange prop setups that make you question what's truly going on in Arkhona, to the general gothic appearance of it all, I'm reminded strongly of my review of Deathwatch: Enhanced Edition with how the setpieces just work to sell you into the world you're in.
TL;DR
A week ago, I was partly hesitant at the current state of the game and if it would have a chance to, well, even be a decent lobby shooter by the time we reached the mandated release date. The last few patches, however, has eased much of my doubts. I can't nessisarily say that EC does a lot different over, say, Space Marine's near-dead multiplayer, but it has it's own ideas and feel to it, and has enough potential by itself to stand on it's own two feet. Whether we will see it eventually hit the lofty goals the original team set for it or not, I don't feel too bad about opting into the Founder's program ages back and enjoying the ride I've had with Eternal Crusade. See you all ingame, heretics, knife-ears, greenskins and loyalists!
I'm not going to use this review to shame on the original idea or other such things. I'm going to focus on what the game is, and whether what we got is fun or not.
STORY
The story is more or less an excuse plot, so thin that I can't even say it's trying to rip off Dawn of War. In short, the various factions have some mysterious reason for trying to hold onto the planet Arkhona, leading to the assault by Chaos Space Marines, Eldar, and Orks with the Space Marines coming to the planet's aide. To make things better, a Tyranid Hivefleet is descending on the planet, infesting many of the underground barracks and facilities for now, but the threat of them boiling up onto the surface is still there.
CHARACTER CREATION AND PROGRESSION
When you first start the game, you start by choosing your faction, followed by your subfaction in the main faction. This mostly dictates cosmetic and taunt flair, so feel free to focus on which one you think is coolest or more interesting. After this point, you can jump into the garrison to brush up on your skills, head into the game, or take a look at your advancements and loadouts. I highly suggest using the game's pre-made loadouts for a bit prior, as they come pre-loaded with modifications, trinkets, and other things to make your first few rounds easier.
Speaking of loadouts, let us discuss progression. Your progression is split into two resources: Experience that grows your rank and grants you Advancement Points, and gainable tokens, which most races call Requisition but Orks refer to as Teef.
Advancement Points are used to unlock various pieces of wargear that you use on your loadouts, from grenades and support items, to Trinkets that offer smaller buffs and Wargear items that drastically increase your stats. Each piece of gear does bring itself Loadout Point costs, which most classes only are able to hold around 1000 Loadout Points worth of gear.
Your Requisition and Teef, meanwhile, are used to enhance your arsenal of weapons via the store. You're able to direct-buy the standard version of a weapon via the use of your resources, or you have various degrees of crates, that will grant you modifications, unique weapon variants, and other useful items.
In addition, however, the shop allows you access to things you can buy with Rogue Trader Credits, a cash-shop currency. This cash-shop currency is used primarily for cosmetic items for your character's visual look, however there is variant weapons you can purchase with RTC to grant you a type of weapon with much more unique visual look. It should be noted that the RTC weapons are built 'pre-modded' however, so you are unable to tweak these weapons like those you can pick off the shelf, and these weapons don't feature any statline different than average for modified weapons. The big draw, is, again, appearance and look, and who doesn't like a plasma cannon with a bunch of warp-tainted flesh stretched over it?
GAMEPLAY
At it's current state, Eternal Crusade is an asymmetrically-balanced team shooter, most of it's gameplay focused along capture location gamemodes. Each faction plays slightly differently, with a major focus of some kind with them. Space Marines and Chaos Marines, for example, are somewhat similar, though Space Marines are more tech-based and focus on general enhancement, while Chaos uses dark sorcery and chaos marks to grant them bonuses as well as maluses. Eldar, with their focus on Aspects, are highly specialized, one of the smallest targets in the game and highly mobile, but don't get nearly as many improvements to survivability., while the Orks are a bit haphazard with their linear growth, have some accuracy issues but can hit hard when they do, and have a unique WAAAGH! buff that triggers if the match goes on too long. In general beyond that, many of the factions share similar elements: Chaos and Eldar both have sorcery as their support class, while Orks and Marines focus on the use of healing vials from Apothacaries and Mad Doks, all but the Eldar's air assault class all have simularities, and so on and so forth.
In general, EC's time to kill is surprisingly short considering the 40k mythos, however I don't got much of an issue with it. Remember, every time they wanna say how awesome something can cause damage, they tend to compare it to Ceramite, aka the same material Imperial power armor is constructed of. However, anyone not playing as an Eldar will probably find themselves annoyed at vehicles quickly early on- Eldar start off with Dark Reapers armed with a decently-damaging launcher and Fire Dragoons with meltaguns, which can cause quick damage to vehicles if given the chance, whereas most races will have to rely on their tanks until the faction gets ahold of a few spare lascannons or meltas of their own. Quad-Guns will probably annoy you early on similarly, as these map-placed turrets will mince through even a Predator or Trukk pretty damn fast. Luckily, you tend to only see those on siege-based maps, and I expect they will become less of a concern once advanced weapons filter in to loadouts over the weeks after launch.
Also of note is the Tyranid hive gamemode, which while it is not the main focus of the game right now, it is enjoyably fun, essentially a dungeon crawl facing off against seas of termigaunts and hormigaunts with Warriors acting as bosses. It certainly has room to grow, but it's enjoyable as a distraction from the tug-of-wars of the major gamemodes.
IMMERSION
From an outward view, it does kinda show it's original design choices with how the maps are built. Many of these facilities have roads for vehicles built in a very Planetside/MOBA mindset of obvious vehicle lanes, and the current selection of maps all feel like they come from the same general area of the planet's surface, making it feel like that if you could reach the top of the mountaints you'd see another of the maps. On the other hand, each facility you fight in is full of little details, from strange prop setups that make you question what's truly going on in Arkhona, to the general gothic appearance of it all, I'm reminded strongly of my review of Deathwatch: Enhanced Edition with how the setpieces just work to sell you into the world you're in.
TL;DR
A week ago, I was partly hesitant at the current state of the game and if it would have a chance to, well, even be a decent lobby shooter by the time we reached the mandated release date. The last few patches, however, has eased much of my doubts. I can't nessisarily say that EC does a lot different over, say, Space Marine's near-dead multiplayer, but it has it's own ideas and feel to it, and has enough potential by itself to stand on it's own two feet. Whether we will see it eventually hit the lofty goals the original team set for it or not, I don't feel too bad about opting into the Founder's program ages back and enjoying the ride I've had with Eternal Crusade. See you all ingame, heretics, knife-ears, greenskins and loyalists!
