switch_foot4
01-31-2007, 06:52 AM
The Silverfall demo starts off in a Refugee Camp filled with survivors from a devastating raid on the player's home city of Silverfall. Most of the dialogue encountered in the demo is not spoken, however the pieces that are, are well acted. The writing seems a little tacky and there are a few obvious grammar mistakes. The main quest first has you kill ten zombies. The undead are all around the camp and you can leave from any direction. This really gives a feel that your camp is besieged by the monsters that destroyed Silverfall. The side quests are decent and give a fair amount of character and back story to them.
The combat is standard hack'n'slash. On your left mouse button you can choose to either use a melee weapon, a ranged weapon, or "elemental projectiles". The last option is reminiscent of magic missiles from D&D flavored games. Those are the only things your left mouse button can do, and you can switch between them with the 1-3 keys. The right mouse button can be assigned to one of five(keys 4-8) skills. The mobs show up on the minimap as red dots when they come into range and they all come in groups of two or more. The first few fights are difficult as your character starts off fairly weak. After the first few levels though the difficulty plateaus and it was similar for the rest of the demo. This is probably because of the enemy scaling. According to the developers enemy scaling happens in ranges. The starting area range is 1-10 so all enemies you encounter will scale with you to a max level of 10; once you reach level 11 all mobs in the starting area should be level 10. However when the player reaches levels 11-14 the enemies still scale with you so perhaps it’s a bug in the demo. If you are far below the level range of a certain area then all mobs will be the minimum level. So if you venture into a high level area where mobs range from 40-50 and you are level 10, all mobs will be level 40 to you. This is how its supposed to work according to the developers.
Leveling up is pretty standard as well. You kill mobs, you gain experience, and you get levels. There are four attributes (Constitution, Power (mana), Strength, and Intelligence) and three skill trees. You get four attribute points and four skill points for each level up and you can spend them any way you wish. The skill trees are divided into three sections each. Under the Combat tree is melee, ranged, and technique (which has mostly passive buffs). Under the magic tree are elementalist, light, and shadow. The last tree is labeled “Other” and has race specific skills as well as nature and technology skills. The nature and technology trees have damage skills as well as passive and active buffs for your character. There are level requirements and skill prerequisites in all of the trees so you can’t just get the high level skills without putting some points into the ones at the beginning of the tree. The light tree focuses mostly on healing and regeneration, the shadow tree has curses, minions, and a few damage spells. The elementalist tree has fire, lightning and ice damage spells. The melee tree obviously focuses on various forms of melee combat (one handed, fist weapons, and two handed) as well as some defensive skills. The ranged tree holds pretty straightforward ranged skills and the technique tree has various passive buffs as well as a magic find (increases % of finding a magic item) skill.
Mobs drop items very frequently and they all seem to have random qualities to them. The armor comes in sets similar to Guild Wars; however you can mix and match. For instance you might find an Apprentice Blacksmith’s hat and an Apprentice Healer’s gloves and you can wear both or collect an entire set. There are no set bonuses other than the visual appeal of wearing the set. The graphical style and detail on armor fits in very well with the overall graphical style of the game. You can make some very cool looking characters in this game and there is a nice variety in the demo. There are all the standard weapons you would expect to find: swords, axes, bows, crossbows, staves, etc. There is also a nice variety on the weapons and they glow with certain colors and effects depending if they add fire, shadow, ice, or air damage. All items come in four different qualities that are shown by the color of the text. There are no set or unique items in the demo, they are all random qualities.
As stated above, the starting area is in a refugee camp in the middle of an undead-infested marsh. The marsh isn’t anything special looking but it’s not bad either. There are islands and impassable areas of deep water (your character can’t swim it seems). The first dungeon is the Flooded Ruins and it’s not that different from the marsh itself. When you get close to the entrance the game asks you if you want to proceed to the next area. After a brief loading screen it becomes apparent that this isn’t a standard dungeon. It’s mostly a wide open space with certain tunnels and lots of mobs; not very different from the marsh at all. The boss of the dungeon was moderately difficult at level twelve but nothing impossible. This is pretty much the end of the demo as you cannot proceed with the main quest or to any other area of the game.
Silverfall doesn’t really add anything new to the genre but it is distinct in graphical style and playability. The demo only offers a short glimpse of the entire game, and the full game may very well pan out to be great. However, if the rest of the game is like the demo (which most games tend to be) then it is a decent hack’n’slash game that will be made or broken by its multiplayer functionality.
The combat is standard hack'n'slash. On your left mouse button you can choose to either use a melee weapon, a ranged weapon, or "elemental projectiles". The last option is reminiscent of magic missiles from D&D flavored games. Those are the only things your left mouse button can do, and you can switch between them with the 1-3 keys. The right mouse button can be assigned to one of five(keys 4-8) skills. The mobs show up on the minimap as red dots when they come into range and they all come in groups of two or more. The first few fights are difficult as your character starts off fairly weak. After the first few levels though the difficulty plateaus and it was similar for the rest of the demo. This is probably because of the enemy scaling. According to the developers enemy scaling happens in ranges. The starting area range is 1-10 so all enemies you encounter will scale with you to a max level of 10; once you reach level 11 all mobs in the starting area should be level 10. However when the player reaches levels 11-14 the enemies still scale with you so perhaps it’s a bug in the demo. If you are far below the level range of a certain area then all mobs will be the minimum level. So if you venture into a high level area where mobs range from 40-50 and you are level 10, all mobs will be level 40 to you. This is how its supposed to work according to the developers.
Leveling up is pretty standard as well. You kill mobs, you gain experience, and you get levels. There are four attributes (Constitution, Power (mana), Strength, and Intelligence) and three skill trees. You get four attribute points and four skill points for each level up and you can spend them any way you wish. The skill trees are divided into three sections each. Under the Combat tree is melee, ranged, and technique (which has mostly passive buffs). Under the magic tree are elementalist, light, and shadow. The last tree is labeled “Other” and has race specific skills as well as nature and technology skills. The nature and technology trees have damage skills as well as passive and active buffs for your character. There are level requirements and skill prerequisites in all of the trees so you can’t just get the high level skills without putting some points into the ones at the beginning of the tree. The light tree focuses mostly on healing and regeneration, the shadow tree has curses, minions, and a few damage spells. The elementalist tree has fire, lightning and ice damage spells. The melee tree obviously focuses on various forms of melee combat (one handed, fist weapons, and two handed) as well as some defensive skills. The ranged tree holds pretty straightforward ranged skills and the technique tree has various passive buffs as well as a magic find (increases % of finding a magic item) skill.
Mobs drop items very frequently and they all seem to have random qualities to them. The armor comes in sets similar to Guild Wars; however you can mix and match. For instance you might find an Apprentice Blacksmith’s hat and an Apprentice Healer’s gloves and you can wear both or collect an entire set. There are no set bonuses other than the visual appeal of wearing the set. The graphical style and detail on armor fits in very well with the overall graphical style of the game. You can make some very cool looking characters in this game and there is a nice variety in the demo. There are all the standard weapons you would expect to find: swords, axes, bows, crossbows, staves, etc. There is also a nice variety on the weapons and they glow with certain colors and effects depending if they add fire, shadow, ice, or air damage. All items come in four different qualities that are shown by the color of the text. There are no set or unique items in the demo, they are all random qualities.
As stated above, the starting area is in a refugee camp in the middle of an undead-infested marsh. The marsh isn’t anything special looking but it’s not bad either. There are islands and impassable areas of deep water (your character can’t swim it seems). The first dungeon is the Flooded Ruins and it’s not that different from the marsh itself. When you get close to the entrance the game asks you if you want to proceed to the next area. After a brief loading screen it becomes apparent that this isn’t a standard dungeon. It’s mostly a wide open space with certain tunnels and lots of mobs; not very different from the marsh at all. The boss of the dungeon was moderately difficult at level twelve but nothing impossible. This is pretty much the end of the demo as you cannot proceed with the main quest or to any other area of the game.
Silverfall doesn’t really add anything new to the genre but it is distinct in graphical style and playability. The demo only offers a short glimpse of the entire game, and the full game may very well pan out to be great. However, if the rest of the game is like the demo (which most games tend to be) then it is a decent hack’n’slash game that will be made or broken by its multiplayer functionality.