Hey Folks! This weekend I spent some time exploring the ARPG called Undecember. I was completely unaware of this game until the launch of Diablo Immortal, and shortly after that point, the folks behind this title started doing some sponsored videos. However similar to Diablo Immortal, discussion of the game also came with a discussion of its cash shop and pay-to-win elements. After going through what we went through with Diablo Immortal and being so egregiously monetized… I decided that I would just give this game a hard pass.
I had largely put it entirely out of my mind when this weekend on a whim I decided to go through steam recommendations. One of the things I greatly appreciate about the Steam interface is the recommendations by friends section because in truth… I care way more about the opinion of my friends than I do any gaming pundit. So I noticed that Teufelaffe had left a review and honestly… it was enough to spark my curiosity and get me to install the game. His stance largely aligns with mine… that I don’t care if there is a way to shortcut the process by spending money so long as it isn’t required to do so. That was the problem I had with Diablo Immortal is that you could not get a fully geared-out character without spending literally tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars. This created a hard wall that blocked my progression where I could not function in Hell 2 because I lacked the “gear score” to make it viable because the game was actively debuffing me for not having spent enough money.
As Teufelaffe said in his review, the game really does feel like a blending of the best parts of Diablo III and some of the better parts of Path of Exile. It is a game where you have no classes and that you get to create your own character and choose their appearance. Then the spell gems that you equip and attribute points that you spend, determine what sorts of builds you can do. I opted to go for a largely Dexterity-based character, trying to replicate something like the Diablo III demon hunter so I am wearing leather armor, spending most of my points in Dex, and using ranged bow abilities. The hardest thing to get used to is the fact that you do not have full control over all of your keybinds… left click is your movement key and there seems to be no way to change that. However, if you hold down your left click you can steer with your mouse cursor which is functionally what I do with putting “force move” on W in the games that will support it. It took some getting used to but now feels comfortable enough.
Instead of relying on getting gear with specific sockets on it, in order to make your build like Path of Exile you have a hex grid that you lay gems on. Each gem has six sides and each side can have one of three colors on it or be completely empty without any colors. Essentially you can use these special helper gems to link other abilities or buff specific things about it. For example, my main attack right now is a spread shot and I have it linked to cast the ability Chain Lightning on hit. That means I fire off this spread of arrows and the first time it makes contact with any enemy, that triggers a lightning bolt to course and spread through surrounding enemies. Spread Shot also has a green gem that increases the number of projectiles… and I am sharing that with another ability called Flame Shot. Essentially it becomes this puzzle game of trying to figure out how best to place your gems in order to make sure you are getting the maximum benefit.
One thing of note is that Undecember is also a mobile game, and is available on Android and iOS and with it… comes a number of very mobile mechanics. Every time you do anything in the game, you are going to see a dozen teal arrows light up on your interface drawing your attention to various systems. This means spending a lot of time clicking through various menus in order to get various “rewards” that are largely meaningless at the moment because I am not entirely certain what anything does yet. The same is true with the cash shop in general. There are things that the game would like me to buy there, but all of it largely seems like nonsense. The only thing that I did notice is that it would cost you about $40 to buy a full cosmetic skin because skins are broken up into 4 chunks: armor, helm, mainhand, offhand… and each of those costs around $10 in cash shop currency.
For those who have played Path of Exile, the crafting system will be very familiar. In fact, there are a number of items that you will simply recognize as their Path of Exile equivalents… like I got my first Chaos Orb and Exalted Orb the other day and the icons feel similar enough. You can do some basic crafting through the enchant system at the blacksmith, or more hardcore crafting recipes at the alchemy table… aka the crafting bench. One thing that takes a bit to get used to is the fact that you have to manually level your gems by feeding them magic shards. That means at some point in the future you will be grinding random stuff trying to get magic shard drops so that you can catch your gems up. Right now I have not really struggled but at 30… I am starting to notice that I simply don’t have enough magical dust to level everything up at the same time.
All told I have been enjoying myself quite a bit and if you also were looking for a happy midpoint between Diablo III and Path of Exile you might check it out. I will let you know as I progress through the game if I hit any hard paywalls. That will be the point at which I check out, because while I am not afraid of spending money on a game… I don’t want it to be a requirement to progress. We tried some of the groupings over the weekend and unfortunately, there is no level-scaling, so you can drag someone along like you can in Diablo III but if you want grouping to be meaningful… you will have to stay within the level range of your friends. I am hoping that when I reach the endgame the content will be fun for grouping because right now the normal leveling content isn’t terribly exciting with other players.
So now to finish up with a bit of housekeeping. Last Friday I posted a note as a bit of a teaser stating that I was involved in the rollout of a gaming-focused Mastodon Instance. It rolled out on Sunday but I regret to inform you that I am no longer involved with it, nor can I suggest that anyone migrate to it. My yesterday was honestly pretty awful and it involved a sequence of events that led to me getting ejected from the planning discord, moderator status, and ultimately losing my account on the server. Granted I am being told that my account and the account of Scopique were not deleted… but they disappeared in sequence with me being shut out of the project so I drew what felt like obvious conclusions because neither account exists anymore. It was a bad situation but I am not going to go into details publicly, suffice it to say I am withdrawing my support in any capacity from the project. If you do migrate be cautious I guess that is all I would say.
I hope you all have a great day and a phenomenal week… and I am hoping my mental health improves because yesterday was a massive blow to it.
The post Exploring Undecember appeared first on Tales of the Aggronaut.
Tonight we talk about how constructed Kamigawa is a challenge and how effectively there are only so many viable decks that you can build. From there we talk about Vampire Saviors a game that Bel griefed Ashgar with and he has been playing at length. Grace discovers Chronicon, a game that we would consider the perfect diablo clone… if it had reasonable graphics. Finally we dive into a long discussion about our earlier feelings about Horizon Forbidden West, a game that has in large part consumed most of the cast since its release on Friday. There is a weird diatribe about dpads and the importance of a good one as well as a quick blurb about how Psychonauts does not maybe hold up as well from a representation of mental health aspect.
Featuring: Ammosart, Ashgar, Belghast, Kodra, Tamrielo and Thalen
Tonight we start off with Bel confessing his love for a class that he never expected to like in FFXIV, the Dancer. From there we talk a bit about FFXIV in general and how weird the Bozjan Front is. Tam shares with us a game that is actually way more in the wheelhouse of Bel, Grace, and Thalen and is effectively Cyberpunk-themed Diablo. The Ascent is a game that was shown at E3 and actually the final product is pretty great. A topic that has been hanging on the list for a while is some discussion of Civilization 6 multiplayer and contrasting it to previous versions of the game. More specifically Kodra shares his experiences playing with asymmetrical difficult levels. We talk a bit about MTG Arena leaning into its computer game nature and doing some things that absolutely would break paper magic. Finally, we talk about the board game Bullet Heart.
Topics Discussed
I haven’t been posting much at all for the past month. It’s not some sort of blog ennui, it’s just that I haven’t been gaming nearly as much as I usually do. It started with the decline in my WoW time. While I found the leveling far better than I anticipated, the rest of the expansion has been decidedly not for me.
The next drop in my game time came from Diablo 3. I was happily chipping away at the season journey, but the fuss over the announcement of Diablo: Immortal sort-of soured me on the franchise for the moment. I tried picking Torchilight 2 back up to get my action RPG fix, and I enjoyed it for a few nights, but it didn’t last. I am too excited about the upcoming Torchlight MMO to get invested in an older game.
As a distraction I booted up Subnautica, which always makes me happy in the way only a game full of weird sea creatures can. I started a new game which was probably a mistake, since I got bored of re-treading the same content and wandered off after only a few nights.
Since then my nights have been mostly filled with knitting and watching the Great British Baking Show, which makes me feel too much like an old person for comfort. The only game I am still playing regularly is Dragalia Lost. After years of playing various games on my phone, they still don’t feel like “real games” to me. Mobile games squeeze in around other things in my life, a few minutes here or there, on the couch or riding in the car. They don’t have the same weight of something that requires me to go up to my office and boot up my PC. I have this weird gamer guilt, that I should be playing something “real”, but mobile has fit my life perfectly recently. With the holidays coming my free time is getting even more fragmented, and 5 or 10 minutes of distraction is about all I can manage. This realization makes me even more excited for the new Diablo game. All the fun of Diablo without being chained to my PC. Count me in.
