As a fairy and fantasy fan, I was attracted by the style of the Nerve Knife Studio's "The Legend of the Hidden Excalibur" when it was just released, and it is also my personal favorite ARPG type game, so with the "Hidden Excalibur" has launched the early access version, let's feel how this fairy game made by the 4-person team performs.
The Early Access Edition of "The Hidden Excalibur" is 3.3 hours long, the plot flow has been passed, and the difficulty has not yet been played.
The test computer configuration is as follows, the control is xbox elite controller ii and ordinary mouse, the game screen is all extremely high.
The front chatter ends, and the following officially begins.
Landscape and modeling
First of all, let's talk about the picture, I was attracted by the painting style in the game PV, and the picture really gave me a bright feeling when I first played.
There is time flow in the game, the change of light and shadow can be reflected in the shadow under the feet of the characters, I have to say that the picture feels very good, the color tone is also very comfortable, the picture feeling is bright, sunny, healthy, full of vitality, even at night there is a better sense of layering, there is no picture completely dark and black. However, it is regrettable that the current game time is only about 3 hours, and the content displayed on the screen is not enough, and I hope to add more content in the update in the future.
It can be seen that the production team has put most of its attention into the combat and the overall graphics expression, but the disadvantages are also particularly obvious: the slightly dull character modeling, which makes me play a little in the process, equivalent to saying the most cruel words with the calmest expression.
There are probably three questions in the characters:
1, character modeling in addition to the male and female protagonists and a girl who looks like a male protagonist CP, all the passers-by face, the modeling is relatively rough, the modeling of villains and monsters is worse, and the types of monsters are not much at present;
2, all the faces of the characters are slightly stiff, and almost no expressions have been made throughout the whole process, so no matter how vivid the performance of the lines is in the cutscene, they will lack a sense of substitution because of the stiff face;
3, the performance of cutscenes is basically a character close-up PPT, in the mirror I can understand the content that the creative team wants to show, but it is really some drama.
Especially when it comes to a flip (let's call it flipping) in the final stage, the BGM that beats the gong and drum plus this luck mirror makes me can't help but understand it as love at first sight? startled? seasickness? Still incredible? I felt as if I had heard ten cold jokes and didn't know whether to cry or laugh.
So I hope that the production team will re-do the modeling after having money, please.
The plot narrative is very careful, and the game is a bit fast-paced
Plot Rhythm:
The story of "The Legend of the Hidden Excalibur" is a relatively ordinary fairy tale, the game can operate the male and female protagonists to promote the plot, due to the short time, the plot is very compact, the narrative rhythm is mastered well, the tension is moderate, it is good for a small team, especially at the end of the beta version, you can also see that the production team is very courageous in the narrative attempt, but it is not satisfactory to show it.
The following are minor spoilers:
————————
The last part of the male protagonist tells the story of his encounter with the female protagonist as a voiceover, the perspective is that the female protagonist cuts the monster, the two are very close, just when I think the two will meet, the plot abruptly stops. The male protagonist's voiceover is covered by the female protagonist's side of the slashing monster sound, and can not keep staring at the subtitles without watching the battle, this part of the narrative is handled very well, but slightly messy.
————————
Although the plot is smooth, there are still some places that make people feel confused and logically confused, and these are still waiting for the story to fill up after a comprehensive evaluation.
Character Development:
The personal feeling of the character shaping in the game is still relatively in place, the game time is relatively short, so the use of some classic dialogue to show the character's personality is high-intensity, the advantage is that people can see the character's personality at a glance, the disadvantage is also to see the character's personality and plot development at a glance, and the results after that are not at all unexpected.
Although the game is short, it still creates multiple characters, allowing players to distinguish their personalities and factions in this regard.
Game Rhythm:
In terms of game rhythm, there is a bit of a problem, almost two steps to play a boss in the early stage, there are very few mobs, so it feels that the pace is fast, and the road to hurry is also very short, and I can't help but have "These two people are so close, why haven't they met?" " doubts.
This state lasted until after the "100,000 Mountains" is only slightly better, that is, the mob code is more, the BOSS still does not take a few steps to meet one, personally feel that let the road be slightly longer and then add a little mob, both things can be brushed, but also can increase the game time, but also can appear to be larger.
ARPG+ Action Adventure
RPG section
As arPG's "Hidden Excalibur" does have an RPG part, taking the Xiu Immortal route, the male protagonist just appeared when he was cultivating to the Jindan period, during which the amount of health and attack power have been greatly improved, which can be understood as the growth of the character, but only three hours to the yuan infant stage, all skills are fully trained, in the future plot advancement and character promotion do not know what arrangements will be made.
In my opinion, the speed of the male protagonist's upgrade from foundation building to infancy is too fast, and I hope that this problem can be considered in the follow-up update.
Action Adventure Section (Action Mod)
In terms of action design, the game offers three modes:
The first, ordinary attack: practice press can combos, damage is average, in the boss station function CD when the monster scraping sha. The attack button was the Y key at the beginning of the trial, and later the official listening players were changed to the X button.
The second type, skill: the male and female protagonists have three skills, each skill has three levels, which is the main output method, the first level of damage is average, and after the advanced level is the main output mode. Skills have CD time and need to be released at the right time. Press and hold LB and then press the corresponding X, Y, B to use, to be honest, it is very troublesome, the corresponding buttons are also very few, it is better to directly map on the four shoulder keys of LB, LT, RB, and RT.
The third, big move: accumulate energy when cutting monsters, save enough after the release of the big move, the big move is the output of the first-person way shooting, it is not easy to aim, so I generally ignore the output, after the end of the big move, the blood and blue are full, which can be seen as a recovery skill. When using it, press and hold DOWN LT+RT, and pressing RT after aiming at the target will output long-range sword qi.
In addition to the three attack methods, the game can lock the enemy, so do not fear of slashing people, displacement has jumping and sprinting (dodge), in addition to two arrow keys to provide blood medicine and blue medicine two shortcut keys, added together to synthesize the game's action mods.
The action of the big move is somewhat separated from the other several, in the ordinary and the move are the third person's back view, but when using the big move will switch to the first person, the experience is very strange, only as a means to return to the blue blood is more convenient.
When I first tried it out, dodging was motion blur, which was very eye-catching to use, and it was much easier to remove motion blur after the next day's update.
Motion blur
Dynamics are not blurry
The game is operated by the male and female protagonists separately, the male and female protagonists each have a set of action modules, of which the male protagonist has a big move, the female protagonist only has a general attack and three moves, the action module is slightly different, but in general, it is not too bad.
In addition to the above introduction, the action part of "The Legend of the Hidden Excalibur" has a touch of stiffness in the actual play, such as when encountering a group of monsters, the lock cannot be switched through the joystick, the monster piled up perspective will be stuck, etc. Small problems, but in the process of playing, the action is smooth, the use of moves is also smooth after the hand is familiar, the overall performance is qualified, and there is still a good room for improvement as a four-person small group.
Mini-games, side quests, necklace worlds
The game of "The Hidden Excalibur" is small, but it is complete, and the game is divided into three scenes, namely the main line world, the necklace world and the dungeon.
Overworld:
The main line world is the main adventure and the world that drives the plot in the game, this part needless to say, in addition to the main line plot, there are two branches, of course, this branch line is similar to the difficulty of "going to the village to kill ten slimes".
Overworld
In addition to the main line, branch line can also play the royal sword flying mini-game, but this small game operation is a bit awkward, the royal sword flying is equivalent to the teaching level in the racing game, is a phased game to reach the destination, each small stage is timed, more than the time will fail.
Necklace World:
The necklace world is the world of male protagonist upgrades, in this world can improve the realm, equipment upgrades, refining elixirs, in this world there is a pair of sister flower maids, a proud personality, a soft glutinous, is not a strong sense of vision?
Necklace world
In addition to upgrading in the necklace world, you can also play word puzzles and backgammon games with the sisters, watching the sunset and fighting with them respectively, making the tense game atmosphere a little easier.
copy:
There are two copies in the game, but they are much the same, each copy has a five-layer structure, using a top-down perspective, the copy has three exits for each layer, after emptying this layer, you can continue to the next layer, after entering the next layer, the blue and blood are fully restored, and the operation is skilled and can almost pass the level without injury.
copy
To be honest, this perspective battle is much cooler than the third-person perspective, and the operation is more smooth, I hope to put a few more copies in the future update, try more tricks.
The setting part needs to be strengthened, and the interaction logic is not finished
Menu settings:
The game menu is divided into characters, skills, items, character history, and monster history.
In the character is the state and equipment of the character, where the equipment is obtained in the online adventure, there is almost no equipment that can be replaced, only enough materials can be saved to upgrade the necklace world to increase the strength, and the character is upgraded through the realm.
Skills are also linear, items and materials are picked up in the adventure and can also be obtained by swiping dungeons to obtain base materials, and then crafted to upgrade in the necklace world.
Character Chronicle and Yokai Chronicle is an introduction to npcs and yokai encountered by the male and female protagonists in the process of adventure, which is still relatively small, and hopes to continue to update in the future.
System Settings:
There are many problems with the system settings, I play the game with a gamepad, and there is an option for gamepad key mapping in the game, but I can't choose it.
Some interfaces in the game cannot use the gamepad for interaction, and can only use the mouse to switch with the controller, such as equipment switching, skill upgrade, but also need to upgrade later to solve these problems.
Flawed, but sincere
There are also many strange problems encountered during the trial, such as object collisions, long loading time for scene switching, jumping unable to climb over the railing, and many other small problems, which can be seen that this work still needs to continue to be polished.
The current performance of the production team is still very sincere, the two days of testing time to update a small patch a day, has been solving the problem, but also the updated plan is also discharged, the attitude is very sincere.
epilogue
Although the "Hidden Excalibur" Early Access Edition is a pass while complaining, I have some unfinished feelings at the end of more than three hours. Excellent graphics and narrative, very thoughtful game scenes and action mods, coupled with a planned update attitude, let me feel that this game has great potential, but it takes a lot of time and energy to continuously optimize and update.