http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=76p1bvMfC0M
This game has been out for awhile, but it recently came out on Steam. Developed by two man team Yeti Trunk and published by Chucklefish, the team behind Terraria, Wanderlust is a 4 player co-op adventure game that, at its surface, plays very much like Secret of Mana. Run around, hit a thing, hit some more things. It has a lot of awesome modern trappings that really flesh it out.
You move with WASD and use your abilities with your arrow keys. The right arrow key adds a modifier, giving you a total of 6 abilities ready to go. You can configure these however you like.
You have 4 classes available, with a male and female variant for each. They all have traits you can put points into, which unlocks more skills. Putting points into THOSE skills unlocks more. The way you earn these points is atypical. It's not like many games of this type where it rewards you for time put in. You earn a number of points based on your performance in each chapter of the story. The onyl way to get more points? Do better than you did last time.
I've only played the story , but there's also "The Crawl." I need to try this and bring impressions.
It features a robust crafting system and supports 4 player co-op on all modes. You guys should play it with me! It's currently 7.49 on Steam!
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I'll probably buy a four-pack next weekend.
Crafting seems to be required to actually get any gear, but holy shit does it require an absurd investment of resources. To make a blue item, you need 13 crafting materials and 3 green items, which each require 13 more crafting materials (or you may be able to find them? I guess that's possible, but after two chapters I've found like two items, and a friend I was playing with found zero). I think I may be able to craft one of these items by the time I've finished the entire story. Maybe.
The UI is ass. Just the worst. Adjusting your skills requires you to go through three menus, and is locked out except in certain areas (so if you wanted to read what one of your abilities does again... too bad!) Not to mention the limit of six abilities is incredibly restrictive, for obvious reasons.
Online play is atrocious. Port forwarding is required, connecting takes forever and locks up the game, and the game will lock up randomly.
You cannot tell what the fuck is going on: every single attack displays a "POW" bubble or something of the sort, completely (this is not an exaggeration) obscuring the enemy. This includes enemies that have telegraphed attacks that are effectively insta-kill.
I dunno. There were just a ton of things there that made the game a chore to actually play. It screams "we did not actually playtest this with anybody and so our arcane, unintuitive decisions were left standing because they made sense to us, the people who designed them".
Last boss was utter shit. He'd randomly (as in, with the same animation as his regular attack) instead use his "line of poison shit", which, if you touched it, would kill you in a couple seconds unless you had a Cleric ready to just cleanse it off of you. Maybe it's intended that you use specific gear with Energy (I guess) resistance to mitigate that damage? Which brings me to point 2:
I got two pieces of gear. Total. I did not get enough materials (nor enough money, even) to craft a single item.
It's like they saw Diablo, understood what people enjoyed about it, and went "Yeah, let's get rid of that shit." I firmly believe that they did not, at any point in development, have anybody play the game, or they would've been told straight-out that what they have is just plain anti-fun.
I can see how it would get frustrating. Hell, Barbusa destroyed me the first time as a Cleric. I've been having a ball of a time in multi, though.
Yeah, I think I read somewhere that it's intended to be played with other people. I could be wrong though.
http://www.giantbomb.com/quick-look-wanderlust-rebirth/17-6437/