Player Preview - Kyn

Title: Kyn

Developer: Tangrin Entertainment

Release Date: 28th of July

Official Site: http://bit.ly/1Dm7ST9

Steam Page:  http://bit.ly/1MGQbkr

Hey what’s up, Serpentine here taking a look at the Action RPG, Kyn, the first full 3D title developed by Tangrin Entertainment, a 2 man development team. Kyn has you playing as two Magni warriors that have just recently acquired their powers after a lengthy ritual underground. The Viking world as they once knew it has changed with once peaceful creatures turning hostile against humans due to an unknown power.

Controlling the individual characters will give you access to their 2 abilities and 1 ultimate. These aren’t tied to the characters and can be swapped with any other ability in the game with 3 distinct categories in Mind, Body and Control. With these 3 categories the game allows for 4 different play style for each of your characters. They can be an archer, a mage, a soldier with a sword and board or finally a berserker with a 2 handed axe. There is one more outlier in the form of an assassin wielding a dagger but during my time with the game I didn’t really find it all that viable. The ultimate abilities you have access to can do a couple of different things depending on which rare stone you pair with it and you will have to pair a stone to be able to use it. Your ultimate will charge differently depending on the stone equipped for instance a life stone requires you heal units to gain charges or for the death stone you have to kill units to gain charges. 

The combat in the game requires a lot of multi-tasking between your units position, abilities, target and you get thrown into it while still completing what could be considered the tutorial area. You can take individual control of each character and you will have to, to be able to use their abilities and move them into the appropriate positions for instance moving your archer away from all the enemies trying to kill you so that your tank can actually tank. Moving your characters as a group adds some features that are a little confusing at first but is actually a great way to organize your squad’s formation. Your squad will keep its spacing between each of the characters when moving the squad as a whole. You can also choose which direction your squad formation is facing by just holding right click and dragging so that the arrows are facing the enemy. This is especially useful for when you come across an unexpected encounter as you will already be prepared for combat and not have to spend the first few second getting your tank up to the front line.

If things do get a little bit too crazy you can enable a slow motion mode to give you some more time to think and manoeuvre through the situation. While its not really needed for the normal difficulty mode, if you’re playing on a higher difficulty this mode will become essential. One of the more impressive features of the game shows-up during the combat with creatures you are attacking actually being crippled by damage. The first stage of damage will have the enemy slowed then they will drop to the ground and start crawling around before you can finally land the finishing blow, something you don’t really see in many games and adds a nice touch of immersion and tactical play of crippling enemies so that they are easier to deal with.

Outside of combat each of your main characters have item slots for armour and weapons. These items can dropped from killing enemies, purchased from a store in towns and also from chests that are scattered around the world sometimes in plain sight, other times hidden in secret areas of the map. These items use the standard coloured rarity system with white being common and purple being rare, the higher the rarity the more additional effects the item will have rather than just plain base stat increases. Comparing the items currently equipped and in your inventory is as easy as mousing over the item, a small stat box for each character will pop-up and tell the stat upgrades and downgrades. You will have to take note of the bonus stats as a 10 damage axe can be better than a 15 damage axe because it has + 5 fire damage and + 5 poison damage or something similar.

Other features of the game include some interesting puzzles to solve, breaking up the gameplay here and there. The puzzles aren’t too hard at least at the beginning of the game and have so far been based around pressure plates activating certain map elements. You can also craft your own weapons and armour from resources gathered while completing missions out in the world as well as buying and selling these items at your home towns shop. Kyn’s music is something else to take note of as it’s fantastic and really adds that kind of almost lord of the rings feel to the game especially when paired with the beautiful environments.

All together Kyn sends you on an epic journey across the world going from luscious green meadows to snowy mountains and large cities under siege all in the search of answers for the sudden aggression from an unknown antagonist. While Kyn does a lot of things right there are some elements of the game that lack that final bit of polish for instance your characters inventory screen is fairly basic visually and there are some difficulties clicking on friendly and hostile units while moving. The base of the game is great it’s just the little things that could have done with a little bit more. If you enjoy Action RPG’s and like a good mystery story wise, Kyn is defiantly worth a look.

Anyway, that’s been my player preview for Kyn. The game officially released on the 28^th of July and is available on numerous online stores including Steam. If you want to find out more about the game check out the links below. Thanks for reading and I’ll see you guys next time.

Player Preview - The Red Solstice

Title: The Red Solstice

Developer: Iron Ward

Officially Released July 9th

Official Website: http://bit.ly/1NTy3Rq
Steam Page: http://bit.ly/1HRTceI

Hey what’s up, Serpentine here taking a look at the Action RPG, The Red Solstice, the first title developed by the team at Iron Ward. After a devastating virus wipes out the population on Earth it’s your mission to stop the outbreak from spreading any further on Mars, humanities last hope. To top it all off one of the worst weather storms in Mars history is occurring known as the red solstice.

For each mission you will take control of a 4 man squad with control primarily being given over the commander of the squad. The controls of the game are what you would expect: right click to move, left click to attack and hotkeys for abilities. To take control of the other squad members you will have to enter a slowed down tactical mode were you can move them individually and use their unique abilities. Admittedly not being able to take direct control of the other units and their abilities outside of the tactical mode is a little strange but it does put an emphasis on the commander of your squad and the times that you would want to take direct control you would probably already be in tactical mode. Inventory management and healing with the medic however would have been nice to do outside of tactical mode.

Tactical Mode

 Speaking of classes, there are 8 classes available including Assault, Heavy Support, Medic, Recon and more. For the single player missions you will be locked into that squad’s specific classes but you will be able to switch out their weapons, abilities and upgrade their attributes before you head into a mission. For multiplayer missions though you will be able to choose whatever class you want but first you will have to unlock them all with experience with the more niche classes like recon being unlocked later on down the track. As with the single player mission you will be able to set your soldier up with guns, a primary and a secondary, an ability set and passive boosters. The same kind of experience unlocks occur here too in what could be compared to how killing floor does their progression system with more power and better abilities unlocking the further you progress a class allowing you to take on some of the harder difficulty levels.

Classes

The multiplayer mode has you squad searching for an anomaly located somewhere on the map that you will eventually find out to be a boss creature you have to kill. Heading straight to the anomaly isn’t the best idea though as you’ll need to gain a few levels beforehand thus unlocking your abilities to stand any chance of defeating it also you will need to hunt for valuable supplies like med kits, explosives and ammunition from inside the buildings. As with most wave based games the wave’s start off fairly easy and slowly get harder and harder so picking the right time to attack the anomaly boss is essential so as not to get overrun. Picking a good team competition before jumping into the mission is extremely important too due to some of the classes’ special abilities for instance the medic can obviously heal but it can also generate med kits, anti-venom, bandages and stimulants that you and your teammates can take advantage of. Similarly the heavy support can generate ammunition which is extremely important as you’re likely to run out before the mission is over and you don’t really want to be running around inside of buildings searching for it. The final boss fight is a little underwhelming unfortunately basically being a bullet sponge, this is one area of the multiplayer that could have been improved upon and would have made the experience so much better but as it is now all you do is click on the boss and dodge its attacks.

Multiplayer

The gameplay difference from single player to multiplayer is fairly small but they do make the two modes feel significantly different. Single player missions requires a lot more focus on squad management and strategy specifically setting up a defensive perimeter while taking full advantage of the slowed down tactical mode. Multiplayer however loses some of that strategic element with no tactical mode nor the same kind of level design as single player that allows for more defensive set-ups. Instead multiplayer is more about continually moving so as not to get overrun by the horde and if you get split up somewhere on the way well, that’s pretty much game over for you until you can respawn again.

Surrounded!!

There is one final game mode called survival however this is basically just the multiplayer mode but for single player, so you take control of a squad of 4 on one of the multiplayer maps regaining the access to tactical mode. However due to the level design and the way multiplayer is set-up, Survival mode is a strange combination that doesn’t really work all that well and is definitely the weakest of the 3 game modes. If you wanted to play single player then the single player campaign is definitely the way to go.

Other features of the game include a stat sheet that keeps track of your multiplayer contributions like kills, deaths, and damage dealt. For multiplayer there are numerous options that you can enable and disable for an altered experience including fast mode were the time between waves will be sped up, Swarm mode were more zombies are spawned etc etc. There are also 6 different maps to play on with 4 difficulty levels to test your team against.

Altogether The Red Solstice provides a great strategic campaign with maps that are well designed and fun to play with an interesting story going on in the background. The multiplayer changes it up with a faster, more chaotic play style that relies heavily on good teamwork and communication to succeed. The game feels like a more squad focused version of StarCraft’s: Wings of Liberty campaign in terms of the actual combat so if you liked that kind of gameplay then The Red Solstice may be for you. Otherwise if you’re like squad based strategy games or you like horde based gameplay, The Red Solstice is worth a look. 

Bombs Away!

Anyway, that’s been my player preview for The Red Solstice, the game released on the 9^th of July and is currently available to purchase on Steam. If you want to find out more about the game check out the links above. Thanks for reading and I’ll see you guys next time.