My take on AT

[crm]

I've been playing AT for a while now (I guess it's been at least two and a half weeks), so I thought I might give some feedback about my experiences with the game so far from the viewpoint of someone who randomly downloaded it from the FDroid Market and decided to get addicted to it. :p

When I downloaded the game I wasn't expecting very much. The FDroid market describes it something like "a roguelike RPG" or whatever; I was thinking this was like... Dwarf Fortress's adventure mode or something, except with way more complicated input! I was really surprised when I started playing AT.

Anyway, I got the gist of playing the game pretty fast. Some of the dialog felt corny at first, but as I kept playing, I started to realize that the "simplicity" (or maybe the "generic" quality?) of a lot of the dialog is actual terribly intuitive and intelligent. As I found more and more quests and dialog, I started to realize a recurring theme: I'm left wondering what the true intentions of all these NPC's really are. Are they good? Are they evil? Are they really trying to help who they say they're trying to help, or is it a mask they wear to make me play some part in one of their own plots, for their own intentions?

I deleted my first character upon discovering that there was depth like that in the game, since I realized at this point that it might actually be important to... ahh... make better decisions? Haha.

It took a while for me to decide that I want to be somewhat of a lawful good type of character. And it took a few more characters for me to figure out that it's VERY IMPORTANT to plan out how to spend skill points and raise attributes. :>

As far as the skill point system goes, I was confused by the way that AC and BC are represented as percentages. What are they percentages of? After reading the forums, I found out that there's always going to be something like a 10% chance for things to hit me regardless of how high my BC is - at that point I deleted my character and made another, this time plotting even more cleverly.

Here comes my character Ivik: I've planned meticulously around several different ideas, and eventually settled on becoming a high-damage axe wielding tank relying on status conditions to fight tough monsters.

It came at a price though. I actually stumbled across an ElyR pretty readily while killing stuff around BWM, so I was like whoa, this fits my character perfectly! An Elytharan redeemer? That can fit pretty perfectly with my role, considering that I've decided absolutely that the Shadow is evil (can Shadows exist without the Light in the first place?). But alas, I found that this legendary weapon's stats simply don't stack up against other weapons I've come across. My impression is that bless is terribly underpowered, so I hope it gets an upgrade some day.

Altogether, so far I'm really impressed with AT, and I'm having a lot of fun killing things and discovering new areas. I think I've completed as much of the main plot as I can in this version so I'm intent on farming up my ideal gear set (which will be complete once I get these RoLS, although I'm almost reluctant to consider wearing them... a boon branded by "the enemy"? ugh!)

There's a lot of little things that I'm pretty sure the development team will improve on, but since they've been discussed in other threads that I've seen, I think I'll just leave my review at that.

So far, great work to everyone involved in making this great game!

[Zukero]

Hello crm and thanks for your feedback. I hope you left that good of a review on GPlay even though you rightfully used FDroid (so do I for other apps).

I believe you pointed out the main design decisions behind Andor's Trail:
- Every choice you make matters. Some more than others, but you never know.
- Roleplay matters. Wielding a two-handed axe and choosing witty answers is more about attitude than about numbers.
- Andor's Trail requires dedication. You can play it only in the bus ride to work/school, but to fully grasp its depth, you need to give it a few tens of hours.
- Community matters a lot. Many ideas and content come directly from this community, and more will come. Andor's Trail would never have come this far without you all forum members.

I'm glad the game actually reflects them in your opinion.

Do not hesitate to give your opinion about the evolution you like or dislike in the threads you mentioned. We often base our decisions on the popularity of an idea on the forums.

Have fun with AT !