First Impression: Fort Triumph (PC) ~ How To Move?

Steam page

So, I recently bought a Switch. One of the games I want to play on it is Mario + Rabbits – Kingdom Battle. Due to budget constraints, I’m unable to play that game now. Thankfully, I found Fort Triumph on Steam. A game that plays similarly to that game. Now, is it a good replacement or not? Let’s find out in this first impression. Note, that I got a press copy of the game but the developers requested that I give 100% my opinion on this game. This game is also in early access and under very active development. Every week this game gets a patch. This review is written on v0.7.4.5 & v0.7.7 so any complaints or suggestions might be invalid later in time. So, let’s go to FORT TRIUMPH

How to move to?

In this game, you play as Liandra Pageturner (or whatever random name the generator decides to spit out) and her crew of various warriors. You start out in a prologue where you learn the basics after talking to your horse. I adore the names in this game of the characters. It fits the funny writing of this game really well. While this game isn’t “LMFAO”-funny, it can crack you up from time to time and makes you put a smile on your face.

It’s a story where things aren’t taken too seriously. Which is quite surprising for this gameplay-style, since they mostly have very in-depth stories. It’s a breath of fresh air actually. A suggestion for future development is that, in the final version of this game, you give also prologue chapters to each other character. This fleshes them out a bit more and gives the player the chance to get used to other playstyles each character brings.

So far, I have only played a few missions of the first campaign and I have to say that I really enjoyed myself. I can’t wait to see where the story is going to take us. Storywise, they don’t need to make any improvements. The way it’s getting developed it perfect. Like I said earlier, a bit more introduction to the other characters would be neat.

I already mentioned this in my introduction, but this game is in early access. So, I can criticize it for bugs like freezing when you alt+tab out of the game during dialogues. These things get patched out since the developer is very active on the forums and listing to feedback from their players. It’s always a joy to see what will be changed after the next update. There is currently a built-in bug reporting tool which is extremely handy.

Now, this is a tactical combat game. At this point in time, I really think that it’s a good idea that you mention everything you think to the developers. Like, when the enemies almost never miss an attack and you seem to miss your long-range attacks all the time. There is a lot of polishing work that needs to be done. This game has a lot of potential but needs user input and playtesting.

Polishing with a cloth

This game currently has 1 and a half campaigns. In the first “campaign” you get mostly introduced to the basic mechanics of the game. The only issue I have is that most of this tutorial focuses on two characters. And not on the 4 characters you have at your disposal in chapter 1.

In the first chapter, the difficulty curve is a bit, wack. At this moment in time, the game isn’t that balanced. I’m quite certain that in the future, this game will be more polished and we might get difficulty settings.

Now, before I continue, it might look like I’ll be bashing the game left and right. That I’m finding negatives all over the place. But, keep in mind that this game is still under development. There is a lot here already, the only thing the developers now need to do is to polish the game up in something quite unique. I’m not hating on the game, nor am I saying it’s a bad game. With that said, let’s move on.

Visually, this game looks amazing. I really like the art style of this game. The levels you visit are detailed and the animation is amazing. I really like how long-distance shots give you zoom in on the action as if you were watching an action movie. Maybe it’s a good idea to disable those to give the game more fighting power on older hardware?

The UI of this game needs some polishing. Things I would love to see is, in what order you are going to move your units and the enemy units are going to move like in Stella Glow. Also, I would love to see where you could move with your character. You do see the boundaries, yes. But, I would love to see a visual representation on the ground how far you can go.

Besides that, I would love to have a sort of mini-map. And on that mini-map, you would see where certain protective places are and maybe easier to see if you are in the enemy’s line of sight.

The biggest issue with the UI right now is the level-up system. It works just fine, don’t get me wrong. The issue with it is, that it doesn’t jump directly in the eye. I didn’t always notice that I couldn’t continue since one of my units leveled up. Maybe a sound effect and a bit more visual flair would be great.

Now, I’m not going to review the mechanics too much in-depth since they are subject to change. For example, the leveling up system gives you two random choices of new abilities. This makes leveling up unique and interesting. But, the stats don’t increase nearly as much. I barely notice any change in stats apart from a very tiny bit of additional health.

At the moment of writing, I really don’t like the difficulty curve in this game. I’m not saying that the game is too hard. I’m saying that this game gets way too hard, way to fast. For example, some enemies drop healing items, but you can’t store them.

In addition to that, you can’t save during missions. You will lose progress. This is something I wish they changed. Now, I could possibly rant about this, but the changelog said: “added basic save game information”. So, here is my hoping they will expand this feature. 🙂

Randomized subtitle.

Now, I know that this game isn’t the easiest one around. And honestly, besides some tweaks, I don’t mind it at all. Stella Glow was also pretty difficult and I loved the challenge in that game.

After I got used to the controls in this game, I was trying different strategies and replaying missions in the hope I was able to beat it this time. This game is a lot of fun to play and should be played in longer sessions. In addition to the music, this game’s atmosphere is a joy to see. The sound effects are really well done too. There should be a bit more, for example, some grunts and moans during conversations would be pretty welcome.

Speaking about the controls, I really have to get used to them. The big issue is that I played more of my tactical RPGs on the Nintendo (3)DS and those use a completely different control scheme.

Something I would love to see is a rebind option for the camera controls. Yes, you can control the camera to see the amazing detailed world from various different angles. Now, the controls don’t recognize AZERTY as AZERTY but as QWERTY. And in the version I played, there were no options to rebind them.

So, it’s quite clear that this game needs a lot of polishing work and besides that, more content. At this moment there is only one chapter, besides the tutorial. The game has a lot of potential but needs play-testers. Please, I urge you to go and take a look at the Steam store page and if that interests you, go ahead and buy it and give it a try.

The game didn’t disappoint me at all. It made me think about things to help improve this game and drew me into its world. I can’t wait to play more in the future and see where the developers will take the game.

You have two options if you enjoy TRPG’s. You either play the game and give feedback to help the game grow. Or you either wait until the game goes out of early access and play it then. Don’t let the cartoony graphics fool you. This game is good and it’s cheap, only 20€.

So, that’s everything I wanted to say about the game for now. When this game is in a more complete state, I’ll take another look at this but for now: thank you for reading this article and I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it. I hope to be able to welcome you in another article but until then, take care and have a great rest of your day.

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Game Quicky – Gamer’s Thoughts: HomeSick Beta 0.1

Recently I joined a crew to make do the testing for a game called HomeSick. It’s going to run on the RPG Maker engine. I have reviewed a game in the past, so yeah. Remember the Legend of the Ninja? Anyways, in this article I’ll talk about the first demo they put out for us to test. The testing is private, so I won’t provide a download link. Also, they announced that they are going to release an updated version in the upcoming days, so I might write an update article then. Anyways, let’s dive right into this game. Let’s analyse it. And as usual, feel free to leave a comment on the game and or the content of this article. 

Early access

I want to thank my friends over at Gamers’Hive to grant me access to this beta testing, even while the spots where full. Crying Man Studio’s are the developers of this game. They release development video’s here and there. The fans can give input into the game by giving comments. This is clearly going to be a labor of love.

Compared to what I played in the past in the engine, the direction they are going with this game is looking good. Graphically, the game looks nice. Everything fits together nicely. While there are some sprites I would change to match the emotions of the story, it’s a known bug.

A suggestion to the developers from me is that in the graveyard, you could put the names of the beta testers on a tomb stone? Like the beta testers are buried there? It sounds fun, but it’s totally up to you guys.

Testing it

Because this game is at it’s alpha / beta stage, this game is far from finished. I could start nitpicking on some collision boxes not being there and etc., but that’s when the game is ready to be polished and finished up.

There are a few things I didn’t like from my first experience. The soundtrack of this game is really great and helps to immerse yourself into the world that they created. Until I heard the theme of the battles. It feels out of place. It doesn’t feel action-y enough. It’s too calm to be an action theme.

What I mostly do to judge a theme is listing to the music with my eyes closed. If I’m able to create a similar scene that fits the music then is actually displayed on screen, then the music is fitting. But the battle theme didn’t pass.

They know that there are several spelling errors. Honestly, I thought that the writing was too generic. Don’t get me wrong, it’s okay, but you feel the Dutch influence as well. I offered to help rewrite some lines, but I haven’t gotten a reply. Simply because not so long after I started to write this article.

Final thoughts

I know, this is an extremely short article. Most of the bugs have been caught that I wanted to talk about so, I think it’s not really needed to talk about them in depth in my article.

It might be better if I wait until the updated beta is released and then take a more in depth look into it.  This was my initial experience and so far, it’s going good. I wish the developers the best of luck and cross my fingers that the final product will be amazing.

Anyways, thanks for reading and I hope you enjoyed it. Until next time guys, take care!