Recent reviews by Beg Landlord

So far, a good base to build uppon.

There are a few issues that could use some readjusting. First of, the headlights are far to dim for the roads you are driving on. The narrow streets are just to dark to see anything thats a few meters in front of you.
Second off, the fact that the reset function doesnt work. Every time I used it, it either turned me around, reseting me in the wrong direction or it just took so long that it didn't help at all. At that point, just restarting the race was the better option. On that note, paying to get another try at a race is just not that fun. Any simple mistake can ruin any race out of nowhere, which isn't helped by the visibility. Either give an option to turn that off, so you can just restart without paying 1,7 million to some randomn guy because every delivery truck in the country thought it be fun to take a calming drive through the night, or change it so that the amount is proportional to the money you have at that moment. A game that wants you to tune your car to look fly a ♥♥♥♥ shouldn't take away all of the progress from the last hour for one mistake.

Vibes and setting are great, just like the feeling of speed you get from driving. For a Demo, I thoroughly enjoyed the game so far. Might play it a bit more, just to drive around, so I'll look forward to how this turns out in the future!

So, Dark Deity, a game I was REALLY hyped for and after the recent E3 presentaion form Nintendo, I was even happier to see that it just came out! I am a huge fan of SRPGs like Fore Emblem and the Saga games, so I will use them as a comparison point, yet I woun't hold this game to the standard those series' have. That would be unfair, seeing as they have alot more resources. I have played the game up to chapter 8, so some of the points I will make may get adress during later stages of the game.

Yet the game has some big problems form a regular SRPG perspective. Some of these may be personal problems I have with how the game is designed, but some of these are just general problem that either are the way they are by design or need to get adressed in the near future.

First off, I'd like to praise the game a bit.
The gameplay itself is really fun. The weapon system, having 4 different weapons at your disposal, each with a different stat allocation, is a fresh take on the gamepaly loop. On top of that, the way you upgrade those weapons, with tokens ranging form level 1 to level 4, complements this system very well. It lets you choose which way you want to gear you characters towards.
Another good aspect about the game is the way the story integrates the characters you meet along the way. Up to the point I played, each side character gets a good amount of story moments, not beeing just religated to support hell. Seeing as the roster of character will only increase, this may change over the span of the game. Yet the stuff that is currently there is nice and entertaining.
While I'm on the characters, I can say that the current cast of units is fun and interesting. They aren't the deepest of characters right now, but they are just fun to use, with their supports giving them a good few options for character interaction. My personal favorites are characters like Cia, Elias and Garrick. The voice acting, altough in the style of Fire Emblem Awakening (little expressions and short voice lines), helps them out alot and so far, every VA did a good job of giving the characters life.

Now that I have showcased some good points about the game, I would like to highlight the probelms that exist within the game.

The biggest problem I have with the game is the UI and how the game presents the player the information they need.
Alot of the gameplay mechanics aren't explained to you. The armor and damage type system, similar to the weapon triangle in consept, giving certain classes advantages against other classes, isn't explained to you at all, making you guess at first why some character have a red or green arrow and why not. After some time, i figured it out on my own, but not getting told about such a crucial mechanic seems weared to me.
This leads perfectly into the biggest problem I have with the UI, the fact that you can't inspect the details of you opponents equipment. During the early stages, a good amount of enemys use axes/cleave damage, yet without having a character of the same damage type yourself, you can't see what stats their weapons have. On top of that, you can't look at what a item held by your oppnents does. During the second chapter of the game, one of the bosses holds an item called a "hot bean juice". Seeing as all items up to that point have been healing items, I assumed that it too would just be a strong healing item to insentivise you to go and merc him. Turns out, it's a speed stat boosert, which really frustrated me after not being able to optain it, because I wasn't able to read its description and plan accordingly to optain it.

Another problem that exists is the way menus and battle forecasts display themselfs and function. Using a controller feels somewhat weird, because alot of menus aren't designed around it or don't feel like they were. Double confirmations, choosing the wrong menu or option, not being able to move the chamera because you switched to the next character (R1 on my PS4 contoller) and the way trading and the inventory works. If you choose a menu, it sometimes feels like you didn't actually choose it. This happens alot during inventory management and choosing support conversations. This may be a personal problem of incompentecy.

Lastly, I want to talk about the lack of polish this game has. I may be nitpicking here, but some things just look janky and unfinished.
The character portraits are all really good looking and the artist did a really good job giving each one a destinct look. Sadly this doesn't reflect well into the battle animations. For example, Sloane's battle model looks really of. Her hair looks like spaghetti or something, I initially didn't recognize her. Another example would be how Sophia looks in her portrait in comperison to how she looks ingame. I know that not every character can get a unique animation for each of their classes to perfectly represent them, but alot of the class sprites are just one simple colour with no real details or special look to them based on their gender. Fire Emblem hadgender specific differences for each class, maybe a ponytail or different clothing altogether. It made each character and class look unique among themselves, but here everyone just looks the same. I know with the amount of classes, this may seem like alot of work, but it just feels like alot of work has been put into stuff like character art and voice acting instead of thing like the animations, which you will be seeing throughout the whole game.

The animations themselves range from good and ok to boring and forgettable. I know I said I wouldn't hold this game up to the standards of the GBA FE Games, but over the years, alot of independent animators have shown that it is possible to create cool and interesting looking animations for these types of games, which makes me even sader to see that the animation just feel boring. They don't feel like poweful blows are being exchanged. They lack the visual bravado and feedback that the older sprite based animations of older SRPGs provide.

This lack of polish can also be seen in the Duelist's crit animation. So, for all the people with OCD out there, this one is for you! For you see, if you look at the right shoulder pad, the moment the character jumps to the opponent to strike them, a lone brown pixle (in Cia's case) remains there until the character finished his or her attack and returns to the default position. And while we are on the topic of the Duelist, why is the Duelist, who, judging from the battle animation and map sprite, uses a rapier, a SLASH DAMAGE type class. This is probably gameplay and balancing related decision, but it feeld weird to me.

I'm sorry I got so negativ and nitpicky towards the end, but I really like the game so far, but so much of the expirience gets bogged down by the obvious problems that exist, some that I haven't even touched upon, like the lack of different generic enemy character and class art. (Why does the Barbarien use the Cleric/Mage character art?)
I have alot of fun with the game so far, and will definetly play it through to the end, so im sorry if things will change troughout the game.

I know didn't touch upon the balancing as a whole, but to be fair I am only at the beginning, so I can't really say alot about it right now, just some things. Your characters all feel useful and can all contribute, yet the fact that chapter 4 has mages with extremly high magic, that could two shot nearly everyone that isn't a HP tank, AND have a chance to crit is kinda not really fun to be honest.

Right now, I am going to recommend this game ONLY to the core fanbase of SRPGs, people who know what they get themselfs into and are ok with some jank, because the core gameplay of an SRPG is fun.
Sadly, for everybody else, who just want a good starting point for the genre or are more accustomed to the newer Fire Emblem games, I would recommend looking elsewhere.

10/10 would MERICA again!