The Future of Real Time with Pause? Dark Envoy Review and Guide

in the last 5 years or so there has hardly been a more debated question in the crpg community than whether Real Time with pause or turnbas combat is better now if you aren't familiar with these terms Real Time with pause is a combat system where combat infolds in real time but you can pause it any time to issue orders to your units the original Boulders gate Games Were Real Time with pause and because of that it's always kind of been a staple of the genre uh good example of more recent Gam that use this are games like pillars of Eternity or even the Pathfinder games which will allow you to swap between Real Time with pause and turn base also not in the genre but combat in the total war games uses the real time with pause system so it's another good example turnbas is of course turnbas where each unit gets a turn in an initiative order and when it's their turn they can do certain things based on their action economy games like Boulders Gate 3 or the Divinity original sin games are good example of turn-based in a recent interview Josh Sawyer was asked to clarify on a tweet where he expressed that with Boulders Gate 3 he thought real time pause had lost the war he said quoting I just prefer turnbas I think it's easier to design more intricate combats I like doing more crunchy stuff with systems and it's easier to make stuff clear and work in a turn-based setting if you don't know who Josh Sawyer is he's a creator of RPG Classics like Fallout New Vegas and most importantly the pillars of Eternity series which for me are the only crpgs to truly rival The Boulders gate games I respect his opinions on crpgs a lot but is he right in this instance though has Real Time with Paw been routed when it comes to big budget games I worry that it might be the hope is that Boulders Gate 3 has introduce crpgs to a much wider audience and going forward any big budget gambles on the genre are likely to stick to the boulders Gate 3 model in order to appeal to that wider audience but that doesn't mean smaller projects from smaller Studios aren't going to continue to make games for that dedicated Real Time with pause audience and personally I tend to prefer smaller games anyways nothing sucks a sold out of a game faster than needing to appeal to a broad audience so if you are like me and are interested in seeing new Innova Real Time with pause RPGs I recommend you try dark Envoy when it releases on October 24th which is tomorrow if you are listening to this video the day it dropped dark Envoy is the newest offering from the upand cominging studio Event Horizon creators of tower of time Tower of time is actually a game I bounced off of not because it was bad it was actually very intriguing it had one of the coolest intros I'd seen in a game but just circumstances of my life I was busy with work and I ended up not really getting into it my understanding from reviews is that it was actually quite an impressive game for a rookie developer to my shock Event Horizon offered me a review copy of dark Envoy which I spammed over the weekend and I have some thoughts about it so here we go dark Envoy is an RPG set in a space fantasy world embroiled in war you and a friend if you go Co-op play as the Dual protagonists Malachi and Kayla sibling Relic hunters in a neutral outskirts settlement War cannot be avoided for long however and through a series of of mysterious events you will soon find yourself navigating the all-consuming conflict between the technological human Empire and the ancient and magical Elvish league in terms of gameplay the Staples of the CRP genre are all here they're not quite as sprawling and complex as games from bigger developers it's a class-based system with four core classes to choose from and three specialization routes for each class that function kind of like Prestige classes from Third Edition Dungeons and Dragons I will discuss the classes in more detail later on it's also party based with companions you can find in your travels to round out your party of four the core of the game is going on quests which will take you to strange beautiful and of course dangerous locals where you will fight bad guys collect Loot and experience and make important decisions that will impact the story as it unfolds naturally combat is the focus of the game and on which it will live and die dark inv voice combat is fastpac and skill oriented compared to the classics of real time with pause dark Envoy has a lot more emphasis on terrain and dynamic movement there are dozens of interesting terrain features in the game but probably the best example is cover indicated by this gray Shield which reduces the damage taken from ranged attacks this fight you're watching right now is actually one of the final battles in the tutorial where you're stuck at level one which doesn't give you a lot of time to make level up choices to give yourself an advantage and it can make the fight actually kind of difficult you can see here I have both of my units behind cover because if they take damage without cover they will die very quickly especially Malachi and especially from the very big scorpion that is just arriving on the battlefield now here something interesting happens you can see Malachi is behind cover and the Scorpion will use its AOE ability which is signposted I have to dodge it now now dodging the abilities is the dynamic movement aspect of the game I was talking about it makes a big part of the strategy but you can see here there's kind of a catch 22 situation when the Scorpion used the ability on Malachi behind cover he had to leave cover to dodge it if he takes sustained aggro from the Scorpion without cover he will die very quickly which is why I used my engineer ability to stun up the Scorpion as quickly as I could buying Malachi enough time to get behind cover again again that's how I'm able to clear this fight later on this fight against a tanky Empire soldier gets a Reload out of me but on a second try I agroed the fight and retreated to this position where a force field Shield reduced all incoming damage by 50% by holding my position on the edge of the force field I was able to clear this encounter roughly 25 hours of gameplay in I found dark envo combat to be a delight it's similar enough to genre classes that I could pick it up quickly but Innovative enough that it still feels like I'm exploring something new however I am a bit concerned about the game staying difficult dark Envoy offers five levels of difficulty and you can adjust it at any time so in theory there's something here for everyone but it took me around 10ish hours before even insane difficulty was a breeze and fight stopped being about utilizing terrain and movement and just came down to hitting the same button combo to Anni every encounter this mostly had to do with a few unbalanced pieces of loot you could find which I will discuss more again later on but even if those items get nerfed it's kind of the natural Arc of games like this given enough levels and loot skilled players will find ways to build characters which Dominate and when you are dominating you don't actually need the fun tactics anymore in simple terms if the choices you make while leveling up are too overpowered skilled players will win the game in the level up screen rather than winning it through tactics which makes for a less fun game in my opinion I can't know for sure yet but going off my experience so far I'm concerned dark en void has made their level UPS screen to overpowered that said there are some natural things in the system which block scaling certain ability and passive slots which again I'm going to talk about so actually this is perhaps a good time to segue to the more concrete specific things about gameplay so let's call this the tips and guides I'm going to go through classes and leveling and loot and stuff like that to do that let's actually boot up the game as I said before there are four core classes to choose from and three specializations for each so we can just go over each of them really quick there is the warrior the warrior is basically the melee weapon user class and because it's in melee it's likely to take more damage so it has more abilities that are focused on absorbing and absorbing damage and tanking damage for your allies it has three specializations Guardian which is kind of the dedicated tank assassin I haven't explored this one as much but um I think it name pretty much speaks for itself this is a very damage oriented upfront damage oriented version of the warrior and then there's the blade Master I've been playing this one the blade Master is focused on dual wielding and spreading the bleed Le status and kind of Life steal tanking from that then there is the Ranger personally I found the ranger to be the best class in the game for me it is the ranged DPS class and even just the Base Class Ranger gets so many really strong abilities uh which I'll talk about in a bit for specializations it has three the Gunslinger which focuses on short range fast attacking builds the Bounty Hunter the Bounty Hunter has some team support but it's a lot about traps and stealth then there is the Sharpshooter I haven't experimented with this one as much according to the description Sharpshooter is a range attacker who gains power from good positioning I imagine a more stationary build than the shorter range Gunslinger then there are the two kind of what I would call Caster classes in this game there is the engineer which represents a technology route and there is the Adept which represents a m magic route both of them function very similarly they both gain a lot from investment into Power we'll talk about that when we get into attributes and our primary spellcasters they have crowd control effects AOE spells self Buffs all of that however I would say the engineer is a little bit more geared to summons especially early on and a little bit more geared to AOE damaging ground effects the Adept gets a few more personal def defensive buff so it's a bit tankier as a caster and you can do definitely do Frontline adep builds and i' would say it's a maybe a bit more Focus especially early game on single Target damage um though like I said both can do either for specializations on the engineer we have the technomancer this is the full-on damage Caster version of the engineer and uh just for my looking at it it looks extremely powerful it can dish out a ton of damage there's The Inquisitor which is interesting I think ultimately it might not be as strong but it has the chance if you hit a critical mass of really snowballing out of control because it's a kind of spellcaster that focuses on draining stats from enemies in particular mana and health and any kind of build like this in any crpg it can hit a critical mass where you're draining enough to survive and you're killing them and they can't kill you and yeah you can just basically walk over a encounter and then there is The Constructor which is the summoned really dedicated summon version of the technomancer and summons are always strong in games like this going on to the Adept its specializations are the Elementalist again this is the pure the more pure damage Caster variants of the Adept the combat medic this is a support version it has some healing spells and some healing summons which is interesting and then the Summoner which is yeah it's the dedicated Summoner version of the Adept and uh by late game you can actually polymorph yourself shape shift yourself into a mighty Colossus a power I actually haven't progressed far enough to try but it sounds super cool so those are the classes attribute wise you have a five attribute system might speed urance power and Mastery we can just go over them one at a time starting with might every point that you put into might after five is going to up your your critical chance by 1% and your weapon damage by 3% but with all of these skills there are thresholds starting at 10 and then for every Five Points thereafter where you're going to get a extra ability at level 10 in might you gain a weapon skill a level in weapon skill weapon skill is a special active that you get it has a special slot so only weapon skill actives can go into that slot which makes it actually quite important so leveling weapon skills I find very valuable but uh you can see here as you'll go on you gain basically the ability to uh counter defenses with more attacks the more might you get so this is the attack stat then there is speed for every point after five you put into speed you are going to gain 3% attack speed and 2% cooldown reduction on your active abilities and then as you go up it will give you movement speed and Dodge so it's a mostly an offensive stat I find both for casters and for auto attackers but then it gives you some utility boost like movement and defensive boost like Dodge next up is endurance endurance is like Constitution for each point of endurance that you add after five you're going to gain 10 plus 10 Health that's flat health and plus 2% tenacity tenacity here is a per reduction in the duration of crowd control effects that you get so with a high tenacity you'll shrug off stuns and things like that it also increases your weight capacity and this is a little deceptive weight capacity isn't the amount of loot you can carry in this game you can actually carry infinite loot which is extremely convenient I prefer systems like that what happens is as you equip weapons and Shields and armor and helmets they will have a weight value and the more encumbered you are the slower your attack speed and I believe cooldown reduction can be well so increasing your weight capacity basically allows you to use heavier and heavier armor without as much of the penalties and then of course as you as you get to the thresholds you're going to gain more percent Health increases and percentage Elemental damage resistance with endurance so it's definitely the defensive stat dedicated defensive stat next up is power this is the casting stat which will buff your abilities but not your auto attacks as much with each point you increase after five you're going to gain plus two flat mana and plus 5% skill power skill power boosts the power of your abilities usually by adding damage but it can also add other things it's just going to boost the P the actual you know value of your skills so and then also as you increase you're going to gain percent Mana which is very important I find you gain a weapon skill plus one at 15 I think there's a total of plus three weapon skills you can gain in the game so any time you see a plus one that's valuable and finally when you max it you just flat reduce the Mana cost of all your abilities which when you're cycling through them very quickly actually adds up to a lot of extra Mana in a fight I find power extremely valuable on you know engineers and adepts like I mentioned and then finally there is Mastery Mastery is interesting it's kind of a general utility stat which is good on pretty much every class for each point you increase past five you're going to gain 2% life steal plus 0.3 health regen and plus 0.2 Mana regen per second and for the thresholds you're going to gain critical damage critical chance and when you max it each weapon attack you make will restore 10 hit points and three Mana now I find this to be very useful especially for auto attack attacking builds at gaining life steal the Mana regen per second can be useful for casting builds uh so I don't like dumping it as you can see when you dump it you start losing Mana regen you get reverse you get Mana bleed and health bleed per second so I like to keep it at least F5 for casters but I do invest in it quite a bit on my auto attack builds in general I find for most Auto attack builds especially Rangers and warriors you're wanting to Max might as quickly as you can and then look into speed and Mastery and of course dip into endurance as much as you need to actually survive for CER builds of course massing out power is the most important and then I usually go speed for that cool down reduction after and then from there you have options you can go Mastery endurance might whatever their role is in combat uh each of these might be useful for it so okay here I am a little further on in the game cuz I want to show you what builds and leveling up look like here I have a ranger Kayla build for each level after level one you're going to gain three ability points which you can place to improve your abilities in this case I've already maxed might and I want some abilities in speed for attack speed you're also going to gain two class points and eventually also specialization points with each level so I'm actually going to reset this build so I can show you what it looks like over the long term at level one every class is going to get two active abilities which you cannot choose and it's kind of a shame honestly I wish you could choose them you can't for the ranger it's blast roll and toxic bomb for my warrior Malachi build it was iron skin and dash you get the idea uh those active active abilities go down here now you can see there are five slots for active abilities and four slots for Passive abilities and you cannot get any more than these as far as I know so this is kind of the natural limit on the scaling of builds that I was talking about so you're forced to invest into better passives and actives rather than more passives and actives now uh there's actually six Active abilities but one of them is reserved for your weapon skill which we talked about in their attribute you unlock weapon skill from might and from power and I believe there's one you can get from research for a Max of three that's why I find that snagging those weapon skills is actually really important because this is an entire active slot that you're forced to use for weapon skills so if you don't invest in it you're wasting a lot of your scaling anyway so here's a ranger build I can show you I find Wind stance to be a very good active so early on I'm going to invest two class points into that I also find the Phantom roll active to be a really good investment to develop the blast roll skill and you can see as I place that ability I unlock a tier two of the Ranger as I place more abilities I'll unlock a tier three eventually a specialization and each specialization has its tiers as well so I really like Phantom roll I'm going to invest more into that and now I should really start looking into passives right and at tier two we unlock some of the best passives stun criticals is amazing I'm going to put two into that as fast as I can then I really like the idea of cleanse wounds this is a decent active I might not invest a ton into it it's kind of a good 1.1 that I can replace later and that will unlock tier three which gives me the skill frenzy passive line I find really valuable and then I'm just going to put one ability into skill Sprint and at this point is when you unlock your first specialization now there are three for the ranger to choose from there's three for every class for the ranger it's Gunslinger Sharpshooter and bounty hunter in this run I chose Gunslinger now as soon as you pick your specialization it is going to come with an active ability that you can't choose again it's the same as when you pick your class these are just Auto selected for you so it's nice when you can find a specialization that gives you an active ability you actually want to invest in other wise that SL is kind of wasted for the case of the Gunslinger ex stream of metal I haven't experimented with this one very much but you can see their advancement lines for this ability and once you've unlocked your specialization for every level you gain after you're going to get two specialization points along with two class points class points can only invest in your base class specialization can invest in your specialization so for my specialization points I want to look into some of the really good passives for the Gunslinger flat attack speeds looking really valuable and more critical damage looks very valuable and you can see I now have more passives unlocked than I have passive slots so you want to be sure to choose I want concentrated fire instead of skill Sprint and yeah that's pretty much it just around out this build I might uh invest in this since I've done so much already maybe get that fifth active ability um and that is a build and then you're also going to get companions in the game so just to briefly go over companions you can get the first one you get earliest is Benedict he is a warrior with the guardian specialization you can't choose a different specialization for him then later you will get a Ranger with the Bounty Hunter specialization an engineer with a Constructor specialization and then an Adept with the combat medic specialization and then further on depending on which faction you you choose you can gain either a sharpshooter Ranger for the Empire or a Summoner Adept so I'm just telling you that so you can get an idea of the bases that are covered by the companions you can find in the game so you can make your main class maybe something else just to maximize exploration it's a final little intro to the game I want to talk about loot the loot in this game is randomized although uh it's kind of limited randomization what happens is as you progress in the game there are going to be set loot boxes with different colors and the colors will will reflect the level of loot that you can find in there so you can see there's green blue purple and orange Loot and you will find one of these randomize in a corresponding colored box now except for orange these are basically fixed stab boosts with a few extra bonus modifiers I believe uh green are going to get two bonus blue are going to get three bonus purple are going to get three plus an enchantment slot something like that and then finally the orange ones are actually the unique ones and these are the real run deciding pieces of equipment one of my problems with the game so far is I find that the unique items are not all balanced well towards each other so you can get completely run deciding loot the the really game-breaking ones that I found are uh definitely multi-shot multi-shot is a pistol it gets the multi-shot enchantment which gets it gives it three projectiles so instead of dealing 36 lightning damage per shot you actually deal 36 * three lightning damage per shot and then you can dual wield them for six shots per attack animation it's actually pretty insane technically its attack speed is slowed down but uh trust me your DPS really gets out of this world also pistols get the really good Ricochet weapon skill I find it one of the better weapon skills so this set amazing if you can get it early the game becomes a breeze and that's one of the reasons why I find the Ranger so good as they get the most abilities for augmenting this insane weapon it's going to need to be nerfed there's also a ring I don't have it here I thought I had it on the save no it looks like I don't I believe it's called the Carnage ring and it gives you an ability which reduces cooldown 1 second of cooldown on your active abilities every time you make an attack I'm sure you guys could understand how insanely busted that can be if you combine that with any item or attribute which gives you mana on attack you can spam abilities and really break open the action economy so those are ones I found so far in my 20ish hours of play to be really gamebreaking by contrast other unique items I found haven't been that good especially two-handed weapons I find I just haven't gotten as much value out of but maybe that's just the way I've been building or playing you hopefully when you guys get a chance to play this when it releases tomorrow you can let me know your thoughts on loot so if you are wrapping up your Boulders Gate 3 playthrough and you're looking for another Co-op tactical RPG to play with your friends I recommend you pick up dark Envoy when it releases tomorrow gets a thumbs up for me it's a very exciting offering from a promising upand cominging developer Event Horizon I hope you'll support them if this game interests you thanks for listening guys I'll catch you next time

Channel: Aestus_RPG

Views: 3,870

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Id: zCv2z9XdwbA

Length: 26min 25sec (1585 seconds)

Published: Mon Oct 23 2023