To those who DIDN'T like the game...

The tale of the siblings Althea and Shea https://www.winterwolves.com/seasonsofthewolf.htm
P_Tigras
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Re: To those who DIDN'T like the game...

Post by P_Tigras »

Personally I felt more engaged with Loren. With Loren time just flew by while I was playing. On the other hand I still haven't gotten past the first season of SOTW. It's not that I necessarily dislike SOTW, it's just that the beginning doesn't really grip me enough. It doesn't motivate me to make finishing it a priority. So despite starting it three times, I always seemed to get distracted by something else before I got anywhere.

BTW, I had no issues with the isometric map. Overall I liked it.
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jack1974
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Re: To those who DIDN'T like the game...

Post by jack1974 »

I've got some complaints on Steam about the difficulty of Jul/Deceit boss fights, since you get the achievements only playing in Hard/Nightmare mode. I checked stats, and while 18% saved Chalassa, only 1,3% defeated Deceit and 0,8% Jul (though I think it's mostly because people don't want to kill Jul rather than the battle difficulty itself :lol:).
I dunno but I kind of like the idea of some super-hard achievements to take. Otherwise I could just auto-grant them at the beginning of the game :)
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Ryocchi
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Re: To those who DIDN'T like the game...

Post by Ryocchi »

I have to come clean, I have not played SOTW, for the same exact reason I haven't played Roomates either.

The romances.

Being gay I'm accustomed to have less options and count my blessings when developers remember we exist, but with Loren you pampered me so much, I mean, in Loren it was super smart having the warm, gentle, funny and caring Draco, and then in contrast you have the stoic, strong, honorable, no-nonsense Amukiki, those two characters are so different and so damn charming in their own ways that it was almost impossible that if you didn't like one you wouldn't like the other, and when you buy Castle of N'mar and bring Mesphit, the dark, tormented, renegade looking for redemption in to the mix, the game just comes full circle, it's awesome.

and I'm just talking about the gay male romances, so when you railroad the romances aka, the only character available for my gender/sexual preference is one and I don't find him visibly appealing is hard for me to get pumped up, Riley is intriguing but if you seen my post I'm always more inclined towards the more classically masculine characters, (Rakesh I wasn't interested at all being totally honest, I loved Dominic's appearance and was disheartened when I learned he was the straight only guy) so being so pampered by you in Loren having a character that tickled all my boxes, I felt that it wasn't enough I know not every game can be Loren, that Loren The Amazon Princess was an enormous titanic project, and that originally SOTW was much smaller, and ended way bigger than it was, but I can't help how I feel.

That is why I was a big defender of the Dragon Age 2 approach, people say "is unbelievable that all characters are bisexual", "I don't want want Anders flirting with me" etc, etc, but at the end of the day when I'm playing it is my fantasy, at the end of the day I'm alone in my room enjoying my evening going in and adventure with my lover Anders or Fenris, whoever I happen to want to see that day (have six different saves three for each romance interest with my character being of a different class in each.) and I cannot care at all what other people say, I think for people not wanting to have characters of different sexual orientation than them flirting, the easier way and also the best way to fix the complains about everyone being bisexual would be to have an option like the less clothed more clothed one, that way you at the beginning of the adventure can decide if you want all the girls being lesbian and all the boys being straight, or you can have the opposite (girls straight, boys gay), or you can even have everyone gay or everyone straight, that way once you immerse yourself into the story you wouldn't have any unwanted surprises, and you can still keep games compact by adding only the cg romances for the opposite sex and 10,000 or less words for variation, without adding new full fleshed characters.

For the record, a long time ago I stopped playing otome games because I never get that sense of fulfillment, I'm not a girl, so even if I love Loren and I find Rei alluring and charming I have never seen his ending or romance.

Someday, I will play Seasons of the wolf, but my back-list of games that I haven't played is so huge, that I'm not in a hurry.
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jack1974
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Re: To those who DIDN'T like the game...

Post by jack1974 »

I see, yes that's one of the many problem I'm facing, beside the number of romances, making more characters bisex, etc.
Anyway, you're really going to enjoy PS2, PSCD, Roger Steel and Undead Lily. Well, when they'll come out :mrgreen:
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Exizel
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Re: To those who DIDN'T like the game...

Post by Exizel »

I wish more game had gay romance option and I understand why you don't like Riley and rakesh, dominic would have been a better option(and way more interesting than Annexdominic) ,
but SOTW wasn't really a romance game so I'm ok with it, Roommates ask you to pay full price for only one romance.
the only problem I had with SOTW was that the ultimate boss was hidden behind a romance, if you don't play the GxG romance you can't fight him, for game taht is more a RPG than a VN. It's not really the best idea.
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Ryocchi
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Re: To those who DIDN'T like the game...

Post by Ryocchi »

jack1974 wrote:I see, yes that's one of the many problem I'm facing, beside the number of romances, making more characters bisex, etc.
Anyway, you're really going to enjoy PS2, PSCD, Roger Steel and Undead Lily. Well, when they'll come out :mrgreen:
Wait!!! Roger Steel will have gay romances??? woohoo!!! time for me to go read some post in that forum!
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jack1974
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Re: To those who DIDN'T like the game...

Post by jack1974 »

Yes it will have romances for all tastes :)
kadakithis
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Re: To those who DIDN'T like the game...

Post by kadakithis »

Exizel wrote:I wish more game had gay romance option and I understand why you don't like Riley and rakesh, dominic would have been a better option(and way more interesting than Annexdominic) ,
but SOTW wasn't really a romance game so I'm ok with it, Roommates ask you to pay full price for only one romance.
the only problem I had with SOTW was that the ultimate boss was hidden behind a romance, if you don't play the GxG romance you can't fight him, for game taht is more a RPG than a VN. It's not really the best idea.
Yeah, I love roomates, but mostly for the interlocking storyline and the developing friendship between everyone. I always felt that Dominic and Sally were more stereotypically gay, in the gay community, than Rakesh and Isabella. I still was more interested in Isabella, but I was genuinely surprised Sally wasn't because the more you learn about her, the more she sounds like a stereotypical lesbian. And Domminic even looks like many gay guys I know, and his mannerisms more so.

But this is SotW. lol. I genuinely enjoyed the game, but the combat could cross the boundry between engaging to tedious. I usually feel story is a reward for combat, but it often felt like the "reward" would be a long time coming. I hated one fight in dingirra where you had to fight row after row after row of slaves, not for an arena or anything, but because you were looking for Chalassa. They could all heal, and that was the second hardest fight in the game, not for a likeliness of dying, but for the tediousness of the task.

On the other hand, I wouldn't want healing gone, as that is a way for me to control how I want to continue. So the large structure of the plot and every series of fights feeling like an arena with very little knowledge of when it was over with small stakes most of the time. So in Loren, it would be the equivelent of nearly every fight being the defeat the series of demons worth so many points before continuing. Except in SotW, there wasn't even the choice for what strength to fight so you could fight less but more challenging battles. And the battles with stakes to them were solved somewhat unsatisfactorily.

It was a little too on rails, and I often wondered why the characters were fighting. Resources not replenishing also meant each fight was like a bug bite, and just drowning in bug bites was just not epic in any way. I guess I mean that even though I like combat in games, I neither found it challenging (except in one case) nor rewarding. Which is really unfair since I did like SotW, and I thought it was a good game. It had some great quality writing, and the characters were memorable.
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jack1974
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Re: To those who DIDN'T like the game...

Post by jack1974 »

In Queen Of Thieves I think I managed to "get it right", at least for what most people want. SOTW was a pure "hardcore RPG" gameplay, with limited time/resources, clever AI, and battles could last a lot.
An user here (big fan of SOTW) did a comparison and the results were funny, the number of battles required by SOTW vs Loren was like 2-3 more. Very small difference I mean. So it wasn't really the number, but how the battle themselves were done.
QoT battles won't last much since it has very limited healing (also for enemies though) and I think will be much better. I often could beat the same enemy using different skills but without any change of equipment, something that in SOTW was hard to do (equipment/stats were fundamental).
Alex81
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Re: To those who DIDN'T like the game...

Post by Alex81 »

jack1974 wrote:I see, yes that's one of the many problem I'm facing, beside the number of romances, making more characters bisex, etc.
Anyway, you're really going to enjoy PS2, PSCD, Roger Steel and Undead Lily. Well, when they'll come out :mrgreen:
The number of romances is something I have to jump on being this game's Achilles heel.

While Seasons of the Wolf, in my opinion is Winterwolves' greatest game to date (I -really- love well written RPGs), the romance bit was the -one- (and only thing about the game I wished done differently.
Though I loved both of Althea's romances, Shea's was another story I'm afraid. :

Mostly because, 1) I didn't -really- like Riley, never really trusted him.
2) I -kindof- liked Krimm, (though wasn't -very- fond of the character from the start), I started liking her more as I got to know her, but
the plot-twist further into the game -really- messed things up for that relationship,
In short, I didn't (and couldn't forgive her,for her past actions, I couldn't as I thought them far too cruel. (the ramifications for the
people who suffered from her decisions horrid) That pretty much meant I didn't want much more to do with her.

The main problem with having fewer romances is that, there means some players probably won't enjoy what's being offered, and not having options, mean the only option is going through the game avoiding that content. This was true for my Shea playthrough.

But again, I -love- the game as a whole, the music is good, the drawings, fantastisc, I -loved- both the main characters (the snow elves being my 2 favourite MCs in any WW game to date!), the fight system deep and involving (even if I never -truly- mastered it, potions and bombs saved me in the -really- tough fights), and again... The entire setting, I loved it.
Even if I wish I had the true feelgood endings with Shea, that I got with Althea

PS : The toughest fight I've been in for -years- was the one where I fought for Chalassas' soul/freedom.
Think I tried for 6 hours before making it ^^ (and I, as always played on normal difficulty)
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