RPGWatch Feature - Fallen: A2P Protocol Review

[Myrthos]

Forgottenlor chimed in to make Fallen: A2P Protocol happen and recently played it, resulting in a review of the game, which he wants to share with you.

The difficulty of combat wavers throughout. The first two battles are relatively simple, but after that you face some of the more challenging battles of the game. The reason for this is that most opponents from the third mission onward carry grenades or some sort of highly damaging weapon like a sniper rifle or machine gun. At the onset two grenade hits can, more or less, wipe out your entire group. Also one amusing quirk of the game, is that your enemies are willing to hit both themselves and their comrade with grenades if they can damage your group in the process. Most weapons come in three or four varieties, the better of which you come across as the game progresses. However, the damage increases progress much slower than the progression of your hit points, which are increased by leveling up and getting armour. This means that after the seventh mission the battles slowly become progressively easier. About 15 hours in the game I had little fear of my opponents on normal difficulty. One positive feature of Fallen A2P Alpha Protocol is that the difficulty can be changed at the outset of every mission.

More information.

 

[Myrthos]

Thanks Forgottenlor for sending this review to us.

 

[HiddenX]

Thank you for this review Forgottenlor!

 

[Terry]

Thanks for the review, I wll keep this on the wish list for playing in the new year.

 

[Darkheart]

Thanks for the review! This game is on my wishlist (or watchlist in this case) for a long time now. Still looks like it needs some work before I might enjoy it.

 

[Format92]

Forgottenlor thanks for your review. As always it is a very pleasant reading.

 

[forgottenlor]

Thanks for the review! This game is on my wishlist (or watchlist in this case) for a long time now. Still looks like it needs some work before I might enjoy it.

Unfortunately its one of those catch 22 situations. Things like revamping the story or creating a save anywhere system would take a good deal of funds to improve. But since only about 8,000 people own this game, and many of them were kickstarter or early access buyers, the developers simply aren't getting enough revenue to make large changes. On the other hand the weaker areas of this game might put off potential buyers. What seems like a doable change would be to rebalance some of the strategic options, but again I'm not sure the game's profits have even paid for its development cost yet. It was one of those kickstarters that didn't ask for a whole lot of money.

 

[Darkheart]

Unfortunately its one of those catch 22 situations. (…)

Yeah, on the one hand I want to support and encourage this type of games, on the other hand I have too little time and patience to playtest some half-baked concepts… Unfortunately, I still have too many great games I need to play before I take a plunge into unknown (or swampy) waters.

 

[Jaguar]

Just FYI, the Watch curator link on the steam page leads to an interview rather than to this review. I don't think I would be willing to buy this in its current state, but I would definitely be interested if there are patches. As to the save system, I generally play games the way this game is trying to force you to play them (for example, I would play hours-long missions in Fallout Tactics and then reload the mission from scratch if something went wrong, rather than loading a mid-mission save - this makes games much more fun for me), but having the save option is nice when the game is buggy in particular.

 

[HiddenX]

Just FYI, the Watch curator link on the steam page leads to an interview rather than to this review.

-> fixed.

 

[forgottenlor]

Just FYI, the Watch curator link on the steam page leads to an interview rather than to this review. I don't think I would be willing to buy this in its current state, but I would definitely be interested if there are patches. As to the save system, I generally play games the way this game is trying to force you to play them (for example, I would play hours-long missions in Fallout Tactics and then reload the mission from scratch if something went wrong, rather than loading a mid-mission save - this makes games much more fun for me), but having the save option is nice when the game is buggy in particular.

I did only run into the one bug. Of course its a pain when its a mission killer erasing 45 minutes of gameplay.

 

[Grifman]

The no save is a killer for me. Was interested base upon your review, warts and all until until I read that. Good review though.

 

[Raldor]

The no save is a killer for me. Was interested base upon your review, warts and all until until I read that. Good review though.

Same for me.

I bought the game a while ago and started it up for a few minutes. I found the writing very...odd... and the voice acting very bad. I'd rather have no voice acting than terrible voice acting, so I wish developers didn't feel like they have to include it.

Anyway, I can tolerate those things, and I was somewhat impressed by the combat system so I was planning to come back to the game eventually. But I can't tolerate a terrible save system, so I'm not sure now.

 

[Wisdom]

Thx for the review