A while ago, "Sword and Expedition: Departure" (hereinafter referred to as "Departure") opened a test in China, and I also saw a lot of promotion on platforms such as Station B.
At that time, my first reaction was: "Sword and Crusade" is not cool yet?
For all of you who are not familiar with the science popularization, "Sword and Crusade" is an idle card game released by Lilith in 2020, and it was also an overwhelming advertisement back then, but the quality of the game was quite high, so it was quite popular at the time, and I also played it for a while.
And "Sword and Crusade: Departure" is a new work of the same IP.
As a veteran player, I can't go and see how this game works, so I quickly downloaded the international server that was launched a month ago.
Disclaimer beforehand, this is not an advertisement!
Compared with the previous work, the departure is PC, mobile dual-end interoperable, anyway, I go to work to play games, so I chose the more convenient PC version.
To be honest, although it also bears the name of "Sword and Crusade", the change in "Sword and Crusade: Departure" is too big.
First, let's talk about its core changes.
In my impression, the interface of Sword and Crusade should be like this, the background world is just a texture, and the different buildings represent the entrances to various functions and dungeons.
But in the beginning, we can control our character to move around the map and explore, and there are NPCs to talk to.
There is a well-organized plot line, as well as plot cutscenes.
As we follow the main story on the map, the monsters on the side of the road will also attack us.
There are also a lot of collecting elements on the map, such as treasure chests scattered around, which will give you resources such as diamonds.
Some of the chests are guarded by monsters, and we have to defeat the monsters before we can get the contents inside.
Some of them only appear after we have solved the puzzle.
That said, in essence, Sword & Crusade: Departure is indeed an RPG game, and this is the biggest change from its predecessor.
This is also normal, after all, the previous generation was released in 2020, and 4 years have passed, and Lilith's technical strength has also improved a lot, so it is understandable to change to a new game engine to make games.
But as I played, I found that Lilith didn't do a good job of some of the core gameplay of the RPG.
Although its map looks very large, there is not much content to explore, basically just walk along the road, there are only a few characters in the city that can be interacted with, and there are more reuses of scene materials, which seems relatively monotonous.
I even encountered a bug.,In the map of the second chapter.,There's a slope that can't go down manually walking.,As a result, a little automatic pathfinding.,You can actually go down.。。。
No matter where the treasure chest is, the reward is fixed diamonds + purple dust + gold coins + garbage equipment, and the repetition of puzzle solving is also relatively high, and it is almost a little tired of playing for a few days.
In other words, players take the initiative to explore these treasure chests not because they are curious, but because they know that there are diamonds and raffle tickets inside.
This kind of behavior is not called exploration, to put it mildly, it is not "surprised".
The plot part of the core of the RPG can only be said to be unsatisfactory.
However, the changes to the combat part of the game are quite good, the original combat was horizontal, but now it has been changed to an oblique 45 ° perspective, and the characters' actions and skill effects look much stronger.
During the battle, each character releases its own exclusive animation, with special skill effects, and the level of this combat performance can be said to be quite high.
After all, domestic manufacturers are generally very rolled, and the set of vertical paintings in "Sword and Expedition" is definitely not enough to play now, so it is estimated that Lilith is so rolled.
This is the biggest change.
In addition, although it is still a 5v5 battle, the pre-battle strategy phase of the journey has a bit of an SLG flavor, and we can change the position of the character to adjust different strategies.
For example, the tank hero in the front row will change the target of the fire (red arrows) depending on the position of the formation, at which point we can choose to let the fleshier character take more damage.
At the same time, the combat part also has more terrain and props, such as wooden rollers, crystals, flamethrowers, etc., and the proper use of props and hero skills can make many levels very simple.
In this way, we have more strategy and options for "arranging troops" when fighting, and the playability has increased a lot compared to the original.
Of course, Qicheng has not forgotten his old job, its essence is still an idle game, we can challenge the levels in the lower left corner of the main interface, the higher the number of levels, the higher the income.
The idle progress is actually quite important, and every few levels will give gacha coupons or cultivate resources, which is one of the important sources of gacha funds for white prostitute players.
Now that we've talked about the battle part, let's talk about the cultivation part.
As we all know, Lilith's art is the top in the domestic mobile game industry, "Sword and Crusade" was so popular back then, and those exquisite character paintings can be said to have made great contributions.
At that time, this medieval Western fantasy style painting definitely stood out in many games, mainly because the quality of each painting was high and recognizable, attracting countless character chefs.
In Departure, Lilith made these characters 3D dynamic without changing the original style.
man，what can i say？你永远可以相信莉莉丝的美术好吧。
In terms of cultivation, Qitu has been optimized a lot compared to the previous work, and the biggest feature is the sharing of all character levels and professional equipment.
Level sharing is easy to understand, that is, we only need to upgrade five characters, and the other characters will automatically upgrade to the lowest level of the five characters.
In this way, if we draw a certain hero in the early draw, we don't need to upgrade from scratch, and we can use it directly.
The same is true for equipment levels, which are divided into six types according to different professions, as long as they are characters of this profession, they can enjoy the attribute bonuses of this set of equipment.
However, when the quality of the hero increases, there will be exclusive equipment, which requires the consumption of specific materials, which is similar to the previous setting.
Finally, there is the krypton gold part, among domestic mobile game manufacturers, Lilith is definitely very conscientious, often giving a lot of redemption codes and lottery tickets, and answering a questionnaire can give 1000 diamonds.
But there are many benefits, and it has a lot of kryptonite points, such as monthly cards, collector's monthly cards, passes, and limited-time gift packages with various faces.
The most important thing is that the things given by these gift packs are either used to draw cards, or they can directly improve the combat power of the character, and the effect is very obvious.
It is really difficult for the average player to hold under such a face-riding bombardment, and once you experience it, it will be a bit addictive.
Not to mention the heroes of the most powerful god and demon race in the late game, it is basically impossible for non-krypton players to cultivate.
Overall, "Sword & Crusade: Departure" is still a pretty good game, and on the basis of the original placement, a lot of new gameplay has been added, such as honor duels, RPG gameplay, etc., and the playability is still quite high.
However, the plot is thin and there are many krypton gold points, which are also real problems, and ordinary players can only rely on time to grind slowly.
In my experience, Lilith is still a very sincere company, and I hope that after the national server is opened, the game will be a little more fun.