Arguably, The Last Spell captures almost all the features of the Roguelite game.
Compared with the "permanent death" Roguelike game, the Roguelite game that emphasizes "accumulation" is more popular with players today. It weakens the death penalty brought by roguelike games, while retaining randomness, allowing players to gain something from each play, which is a positive feedback and motivates players to continue to repeat the game. That is to say, even if the game fails this time, you will have a corresponding "harvest". This "harvest" can make you try another level with curiosity, or it can make you sure that you can go further this time.
Just as roguelike games emphasize "death is everything is lost", Roguelite games emphasize that "losing also gains", which is evident in "The Last Spell". In the game, we need to fight off the zombies that will pour out of the black fog every night in a ruined city called "Lake City", until 12 days later, the mages of the Central Magic Circle chant "The Last Spell" to eliminate all the magic in the world, and the game is over.
Limited by the limitations of weapons, resources and other aspects, the first time you play, you can only last until the third or fourth day, and then you can only desperately watch the zombies pour into the city and destroy everything. One by one, the heroes you control have fallen down... In the end, you have to sigh in your heart that "the trend is gone" and end the game.
It's just that "game over" is just the beginning for Roguelite games. It's like letting you play a doomed novice level first, two fists are difficult to defeat four hands, and finally be killed, and then "snap" and jump out, telling you "you did not fail, all this is just the beginning".
In "The Last Spell", the makers are quite polite and cunning in this matter - they will prompt "the game is extremely difficult" in the announcement of entering the game, but when choosing the difficulty, they recommend that you choose "standard" rather than "simple" difficulty. When you want to choose "simple" difficulty, they gently advise you to "experience it and adjust the difficulty according to your needs."
Believe me, if you do the same, and you happen to have an iron head, I'm afraid you will most likely go through a whole process of confidence to confusion like me. If you are not a master of wargames, I personally recommend starting in a simple mode first, so that you will have a more standardized and progressive best game experience, that is, you can experience the fun of "The Last Spell" in a short period of time.
The reason for this is that most of the gameplay in The Last Spell revolves around the "Temple of The Oracle" system. In the "Temple of the Oracle", there are two goddesses, one will release quests to unlock various rewards for you after you complete various tasks, and the other requires you to unlock rewards with the "Filth Essence" you obtained by killing monsters.
The rewards vary on both sides, but the overall content of the game is included and requires you to unlock it by playing continuously. Only in this way will it be possible for you to get better and more kinds of equipment, build more diverse defensive buildings, and randomly brush out more outstanding character talents during the game, while the simple mode of play can quickly achieve various unlock conditions, greatly reducing the number of times you play repeatedly in the process, and the garbage time that comes with it.
Another advantage of playing the simple mode is that it can guarantee "clearance". As I said earlier, roguelite games represent death is harvest, so in the case of increased randomness and many levels, the length of the overall clearance process will naturally have certain restrictions, not to mention that "The Last Spell" itself is still an early access version, and the clearance is not a particularly time-consuming and laborious thing, nor is it the core emphasized by this type of game - its current content is only required to you survive 12 rounds (that is, 12 days), which is enough.
The makers also understand this, so the Steam store interface emphasizes the "replay value" label.
Just as the flow theory emphasizes the unity of "skill" and "difficulty", the difficulty of playing is not equal to that of existing skills, which is extremely destructive to the player's playing experience. Playing standard mode before it is unlocked is like flossing teeth with an iron rod, which is difficult and inefficient. Maybe after playing the ten-hour standard mode, you look back and find that not only has it not been able to pass the level, but the Oracle Temple has not been able to successfully unlock many things, and the gain is not worth the loss.
So, unless you're already a master of hardcore battleboard games, there's really no need to, at the expense of destroying the overall experience, thanklessly starting with standard mode and playing it first or later. After the initial level of simple difficulty, you have a lot of ways to increase the difficulty - slowly reduce the buff of the opening game, or open a higher level of "Apocalypse" difficulty, or directly kill to the standard mode, it is okay. Here, the simple mode is also the fastest to unlock the "Temple of the Oracle" and experience the gameplay of the game's full Rouge content as early as possible.
Even if the level is completed, relying on randomness and the continuous unlocking design of the "Temple of the Oracle", the replay value of The Last Spell will not be destroyed.
In fact, regardless of the difficulty, "The Last Spell" as a whole is very free and fun.
Heroes are the most controlled presences in The Last Spell. There are 4 initial heroes in Simple mode, but only 3 in Standard mode, and if you want to recruit more heroes, you must first unlock hotels in the "Oracle Temple", then build at the right time as the game progresses, and spend gold to recruit.
There is no difference in essence between heroes except talent. They are all interoperable in the use of weapons, that is, you can create a full range team, or a full range team based on personal preferences - these can be decided by you, as long as you can pass the level, how to tinker does not matter. At the same time, each upgrade of the hero will provide two optional attribute enhancements, as well as a little skill point, so that you can build the hero you want step by step according to your own needs during the game.
Compared to countless monsters, the hero unit with a ceiling of only 7 places seems to be a drop in the bucket, but this is also one of the cool places in "The Last Spell". Action points, mana points, and movement points, if used properly, with the right weapon type, will not only allow you to kill seven in and seven out of the monster swarm, but also pull to win more with less.
Reasonable wargame design, with smooth animation performances and high degrees of freedom, further enhance the replay value of "The Last Spell".
But The Last Spell isn't just a wargame, it also adds elements of base building. After surviving the first night, you can start using the resources at hand to transform the city - with gold coins to build functional buildings, to return blood to blue, explore the fog, recruit heroes, etc., and to build defensive buildings with materials, you can only build 4 wooden defenses initially, and with the unlocking of the "Oracle Hall", you can gradually harvest more diverse and powerful buildings - like trebuchets, crossbows and traps.
Thanks to the base building system, the later "The Last Spell" is more like a tower defense game that can control heroes.
Sadly, as I said at the beginning, The Last Spell captures almost all the features of roguelite games.
Yes, almost.
It relies on the plot, rationalizes the gradual unlocking mechanism of Roguelite in the game design, makes the game have a high replay value and freshness, and also designs a series of interesting and various random weapons and talents, so that players need to plan the growth route of the character according to local conditions every time they start. The fly in the ointment is that this randomness brings more of a sense of contradiction between "complex" and "simple".
The rich talent tree and weapon types of "The Last Spell" seem to drive unlimited possibilities by virtue of randomness, so that players need to decide the choice of weapons according to the talent of the born character when playing, but in fact, the current talent does not have any hard demand.
In other words, as long as I think, any character can play any particular weapon - this has little to do with the technology of play, but the existence of talent is too chicken ribs, not so much a high degree of freedom to adapt to local conditions, but too much freedom, resulting in no restrictions on the player.
Randomness has lost the shackles of the player here, but also erased its own sense of freshness and unknown, there is a sense of boredom of "breaking ten thousand laws", and the time cost of playing itself and the cost of cultivating each game character further leads to the player's desire to explore being worn away. It's like playing Hades, where the content of each route is fixed, and I just have to choose the route I want to take — so that rogue games have lost one of the core "variables."
After completing the level, the mages will say, "Please give us a little more time!" ”
Although the selection design of each upgrade attribute is quite complicated, but the players come and go, there are only a few often selected, and the "free" training route expected by the design itself is also not reflected in the game, but some "sacrifice streams" that are designed in a different way have attracted the attention of many players. This kind of freedom leads to the cultivation of existing characters in the eyes of players, and it is inevitable that some "food is tasteless and abandoned is precious".
I believe that the lack of effective randomness is not the original intention of the producers, but more like the ambition to complicate the overall system after losing sight of each other. Considering that the game is currently in the early beta stage, I don't mind giving the makers higher expectations, after all, after playing, I can really feel the hope and eagerness for content updates in my heart, and sometimes I can't resist the urge to open the game and give it another shot.
At least in terms of replay value, The Last Spell was quite successful. It's not perfect, but it's addictive.