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Hmmmmm, I got a mixed feeling about this, it really is love & hate relationship.

4K View2023-06-27

Prime of Flames

8.2

StrategyRoguelikeTactical RPGEditors' Choice

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I have enjoyed many single player games on both PC and mobile. I had pretty high expectations before laying my hands on this game due to the graphics, trailer of the game, as well as a recommendation from a friend. The game game me a very mixed feeling, as it feels very ambitious but very very unpolished. I may be overly harsh here, but I would want to address all the issues I found before going to the pros.

After downloading, the game showed a very quick and short intro, with strange text overlapping issue(not sure if it's just my phone), and then straight into action with quite confusing tutorial. The introduction of the story is usually what grabs a player's attention, but the text overlapping issue, on top of very fast dialog, makes it hard to even read properly before the text disappearing. So basically, I didn't even know what just happened, the main character fell and needed recover? Not a great start for grabbing user's attention or building up a story. After the very short intro, the game went straight to tutorial. During the tutorial, the music is nice, gave me an age of empires nostalgic feel, which is nice.

The tutorial started out with rouge venture on a map teaching you the basic elements of the game, with explanations that essentially is both confusing and hard to understand, I was hoping for the mini video accompanied with the text would help, but not only it's all in suppose Chinese or some foreign language, but it's also showing it very quickly, I have no idea what is it trying to portray; on top of that, the text dialog also is confusing. What does it mean "Though the Pioneers have B?" I am not trying to be critic on the grammar or anything knowing that this game is made by a foreign developer, but at least it needs to make senses; if the sentence doesn't make any senses, not only will it confuse the player, but also break the immersion of the game( luckily this game is not heavily story based)

After the first slide, it goes to introduce some other basic game mechanics like the Altar, which you can choose 1 out of 3 items. The first two makes senses, but what does spawn 5 extra berries do? If the game is emphasizing on rouge like adventure, where as each choice matter and irreversible, then it is a important decision that player has to make in order to progress and build up the team accordingly; but this is pretty vague, which forces me to pick the berries and try out in the game; instead of explaining properly in Altar.

After Altar, It teaches you the rest of the basic elements of the game: Fighting(which I think it was pretty straight forward) with some small issues of the text again

After the short but straight forward tutorial, We are in the fight! However, that's where the tutorial again missed out my "5 extra berries".

Look at this fighting screen shot in tutorial. can you tell me what does my altar item did? Oh wait... it spawned FOUR flower looking thing that perfectly blends into the enviroment instead of my FIVE berries. that I have absolute 0 ideas what it does; and only found out after 1 hour of playing and realizing that, oh I can click on the terrain and blocks to show the properties. Why is this not mentioned in the tutorial or the game. I do like Easter egg or discovering different play style or mechanics, but I do not like my time being wasted for things that can be easily mentioned but omitted for no apparent reasons.

After the fighting tutorial, you gained 10 gold thing, which I still don't know what it does. Then now we have 3 characters which we can level up now. Great ! but wait, once you follow the tutorial to level it up, which skill should we choose? when the description is cut off? "each enemy within 2 surrounding cells from this character..........??

Lets you cross obstacles, move +3, damage done......?

Luckily this is just small issue that can be easily fixed by the dev, I think it's either translation issue or sizing issues, but this definitely is crucial part of the game that should not be broken.

next, again, unhelpful tutorial explanation about "Pool of Healing"

I just finished a fight, and took damage, does that mean this pool will heal my damaged character? And where is sickbay? Oh wait, you just gota find out yourself. (again, relatively small issue that can be fixed with better explanation but really really confusing), because you can't use it after the tutorial ends, apparently it's not meant to heal "wounded character", but character who died, as lost all hp and disappeared from the battle.

Next up, recruiting new character, with drastically different stats.

One is scout and one is guard, but what's the difference between classes? You guessed it, no explanations. and no explanation on the stats as well, but luckily the stats icons are pretty self explanatory.

After recruiting, we are prompted with a boss fight, which doesn't have too much to be nit picked about; and the very confusing and strange tutorial ends. I feel like after the tutorial, I become more confused than before playing the tutorial; at least, I got a very basic idea of how the game works.

Now, the main demo and fun begins, so I thought......

First splash after the tutorial looks clean and nice

We can pick 3 different races: Ninelie, Bronion, and Evernight, with 3 different difficulties. I like how this very screen is extremely simple, yet intuitive and self explanatory, unlike the confusing tutorial; It tells you each race has it's own difficulty, and different difficulty yields different resources. If the tutorial can be like this race / clan selection, I wouldn't have to type all that out above....

As try hard as I am, I obviously picked the hardest race and Conquest mode.

The rouge has 3 stages, at first stage you will have 4 playable characters, and the intro was okay,

during the battles, things got very confusing as to what is going on. For instance, I was battling enemies and my characters become low health, and after a turn, all of them become full HP again, and this is only happening to Evernight, NOT bronion or NInelie?. I thought evernight is most difficult race to play?

As I was progressing through the stages, I feel completely lost on what each character do as every character has unique abilities, and unique class. So naturally, I am only basing off the "status icon" to judge my character's power level or abilities. Then, I encountered things that are intuitive and aren't very intuitive.

For instance. The shop, very straight forward, you buy items to strengthen your characters, but do you equip it? nothing was mentioned about it, apparently you just gets it; and what triggered getting the items after a stage has completed?

How can I cast a spell? hmmm I don't really know.

Then, I came across this

Rebirth river, pay my respect and be reborn again. I don't know what it does.... please any explanation? Oh, it just resets your character skills after finding out the hard way. I know I am nit picking, but hey, if I have to waste my time finding out each and every element myself because the game doesn't explain properly to you, as in I have to actively suffer through and learn to play the game before being entertained, why don't I choose a different game?

Surprisingly, after the first stage and defeating the boss, I was quickly assuming the demo game was over, but to my suprise in a good way, there are more to come, more confusion as well....

boss fight was fun but also confusing at what's going on because all different abilities were being triggered, boss, my character, and spawning of enemies

Look at this status affect on so many different characters, I don't know what they are and what they does, at this point i just gave up the hope of understanding what it does because even on the highest difficulty and most difficult race I am somewhat just rolling through the game with some luck

And spoiler alert, finally the stage 3 boss which took me 3 tries and 30 minutes to defeat because I did not know where and how to look at the boss's property until I was forced to because it was infinitely re-spawning unless you defeat 3 of them in one turn all at same time.

Another issue i have encounterd is that in many sitautions, i wish i could've zoomed out of the map more to better plan, like this one, where is the 3rd boss at???

and if i have all this movement and attack range, instead swiping around the map, why can't i zoom out to see more?

Ok enough rant about the unpolished and confusing mechanics; it was necessary to mention all the above even though it could be an easy fix for the devs, because all the above confusing issues will lead to my biggest issue with the game, which is information overload. Once you ventured into the stages, you will constantly be recruiting / disbanding your characters(which you just got used to and starting to understand the abilities / synergy) and the game forces you to disband the character once it dies, and each run, the recruits are vastly different, so you will be very confused as to who does what, what class is this, what do i need, with different items and buffs. This doesn't only applies to different classes of characters, skills, but also the fighting mechanics and terrains as well. There are bushes, fire, enemy buffs, debuffs, which non were explained; and I was just venturing completely like an idiot, don't know what just instant killed my character, or what triggered my character to throw out a sick combo that instantly killed 5 enemies. I wanted to be in control, and strategic about the game play, not completely no brain brute forcing the game and rolling a dice on luck, as in luck / brute force shouldn't be the core emphasis of the game.

Speaking of different game modes, There are many potentially fun game modes but was ruined because lack of explanation, some were straight forward, but some was very vague. For instance, protecting the villegers, or blocking enemy from entering certain places, I did not know you can control the villergers, or stand on the exit of enemy to block them exiting, again, all those can be easily resolved if a new game mode was introduced, and simple tutorial or explanation were given.

For example, The bronion race had very interesting mechanics plans bomb, and sometimes you can denote it without taking damage(by the character who planted it), sometimes you can push the bomb towards the enemy and explode it, sometimes you will kill your own character with the bomb you planned. But all of these are not explained what so ever, and it becomes frustrating to use the mechanics because it does more harm than good. And when the explanation become overly verbose like my review here, it becomes boring to read.

More over, after I finished the all 3 stages which is the demo of the game, I feel completely lost other than the basic mechanics that were mentioned in the tutorial. I don't know what the red stone does, i don't know my characters, I don't know how to increase the limit of character size, I don't know when my character levels up and can learn a new skill; I have no idea what's a good combo and synergy to be used together, I don't know why or what just happened that triggered my character to die or use a skill.

I will now introduce some nice things I noticed oppose to all the unpolished flaws mentioned above:

At each stage, The boss can always be viewed, so you know it's status and how it compares to your current characters , teams, and how to stratgically plan before attempting the boss.

With all that out of the way. Let me summarize the Cons and note that this is just what I have came up with and it is still very prilimitary, I can only recall what I remembered, but just note that there are many things that are still unpolished and needs to be worked on:

1. Extremely confusing tutorial, but the issue can be easily fixed by dev

2. Alot more information that were not mentioned in the tutorial

3. Lots game modes but still lack of explanation which ruins the potential

4. Characters are overwhelming and does not relatable, after you spending lots resources buidling a character, next run they just gone; and if you want to use it again, try your luck. hmmmmmmm.

Ok, let's talk about the pros which I will just quickly summarize here to save some time:

1. The art is decent.

2. The music is nice, but i think could be even better perhaps

3. the potential for this game is huge due to it's complexity, but it can only be good if the game dev throughly thought out how to present them in a way that player understand and appreciate; but at the current stage this is clearly done wrong and only made the opposite effect and making me go crazy.

4. Different races and character combinations gives the run completely different feel, and keeps the game interesting, there are alot of room for exploration and strategic combinations. (again, only if presented in a intuitive manner)

What I want to see changed:

1. Better tutorial that explain things clearly and intutively, using animation, fights, or anything that isn't super text based to make it fun(i think the dev tried but wasn't doing a great job) perhaps it can be done in a way such that everytime an new element that player hasn't discovered was introduced into the game, there will be a mini tutorial, and tutorial can be re-watched, or retried later in the menu.

2. Slower progression. the information overload is real, and most stuff not only mechanics are very text heavy, which can get bored very quickly, swap that for some actions.

3. make the characters more engaging, maybe start out with a limited amount of character and race first, so you can slowly progress and know each and every character, instead of bombarding all of them to your face at once with randomness. Maybe even lock it so that can be unlocked by achieving different tasks, or using resources.

4. and many more... im tired just kinda tired of typing.

In the end, I've spend lots of my hours on this game and with a lot of patience, I've finally finished it, all 3 races. My conclusion was that, although the game had huge potential, and I did enjoyed the game to some degree, but it was both fun, and painful for me to go through the game, painful in a boring way that is not the same as dark soul or other hardcore game; and It didn't bring me the eagerness to try out different characters and different races because the fear and overwhelming information I have to go through each every time.

Once I've finished all 3 races, unfortunately I no longer have the urge to make the run again. This is important, it was both fun and painful for the first time running through the game, it does not promote a senses addictiveness and urge to explore, progress more like nostalgic games I used to play on gameboy like fire emblem or gundam. There are alot more things the dev needs to be worked on in order to truly show the potential of this game. I wanted to play a game which again and again draws me back in and continue playing, and promotes the game mechanics at a reasonable pace so the players aren't bored out quickly, and slowly understand and appreciate the depth of the game. At the moment the game just feels very rushed.

I want this game to be good, I can see the dev has poured in alot of effort into this game to try to make it good, so hopefully the final version will address all the issues mentioned.

GLHF

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Mentioned games

Prime of Flames

8.2

StrategyRoguelikeTactical RPGEditors' Choice

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Comments

BIGSHE

Hello, thank you very much for your detailed and clear feedback. We greatly appreciate your expectations and we fully acknowledge your criticisms of the shortcomings in our game. We will make adjustments to ensure that all these issues are addressed before the official launch of the game. It is an honor for our team to receive the attention of players like you. We will continue to work hard to make our game even better. Thank you again for your feedback! We hope you have a wonderful day.

2023-07-01