The Iron Oath - Preview @ SplatterCatGaming

[HiddenX]

SplatterCatGaming checked out the sandbox RPG The Iron Oath:

The Iron Oath - Open World Sandbox Mercenary RPG

The Iron Oath Gameplay with Splat! Let's Play The Iron Oath and check out a game where you'll lead a company of mercenaries through hell or high water to earn a paycheck.

More information.

 

[henriquejr]

I played the demo until the part where our team gets out of the tutorial dungeon. Having never played either Darkest Dungeon or one of its many clones or even Battle Brothers, I tell you one thing: the game is really hard!

Oh, and you know that part where I said the team got out the tutorial dungeon? Actually two characters only made it out alive!

You have to plan and play each battle very carefully: using skills, positioning, flank your enemies (and don't get flanked) etc.

The demo has two preset difficulty modes - Adventurer and Battle-Hardened (which I chose) - and a third one where you can customize some variables.

The text font size could be a little bigger and the UI isn't bad but could use some little improvement. The pixel art is nicely done!

I'll keep an eye on it

 

[henriquejr]

Second time playing the demo and I managed to get out the tutorial dungeon with everyone alive.

 

[Carnifex]

Man, I have such huge hopes for this one!! It seems it's been quite some time since the kick starter campaign, I pray we get to actually fire this one up perhaps later this year or early next.

 

[rjshae]

Their Steam page has been recently updated to give a Spring 2022 release date, so hopefully it will be out by May. They had changed it to "when it's ready" after the pandemic hit.

 

[Kordanor]

Played the demo as well. It can be a bit frustrating as the game isn't that great in communicating some stuff to the player.
I brought several things up on discord. Lots of these were already known and most of them are going to improved.
Graphically the game looks great.

Also this is not a roguelike. You can enable ironman mode, but I doubt it's going to be very pleasant. On the other hand savescumming might be an issue in the free game. Combat might still be challenging though (you cant save within combat).
If time permits I am going to play it. I just hope they take their time to balance it and polish it a bit more.

They were saying that they are going to announce the release date in a couple of weeks.

 

[henriquejr]

Played the demo as well. It can be a bit frustrating as the game isn't that great in communicating some stuff to the player.

I also had this same feeling. So much so that I had e.g. to ask on the Steam how I could cancel a skill usage (before using it, obviously) because simply pressing <ESC>, as it's usually the case in other games, didn't work here.

<Their answer: "You used to be able to right click to unselect the ability (and bring back the move grid if a move is available), but it's currently bugged. For now if you want to unselect an ability you can click the 'Undo Movement' button (or press X) on the hotbar to achieve the same result.". Meaning: the "Undo Movement" button also serves as a manner to Undo Skill Usage" but I never would have realized that.>

Graphically the game looks great. (…) You can enable ironman mode, but I doubt it's going to be very pleasant.

Fully agreed here! On both statements.

The game looks solid, it just needs a coat of polish and balance here and there. I've already wishlisted it!

 

[Arkayne]

Played the demo today - got through the starter dungeon and found another later on that my party did not make it through. The difficulty is there, but it might need some tweaking yet.
Love the customization at the party level and the individual character level for the skills as well as equipment. So much to dive into here! A very ambitious design, I hope it turns out well. The fun and engagement I'm experiencing reminds me of my time playing Crying Suns - a game I could not stop playing until the end. This game might have the edge in terms of replayability though and its turn-based.

 

[lackblogger]

Just like Battle Brothers did, this game has a certain sense of appeal to me, however, like Battle Brothers, it heavily puts me off by, from what I can see, a huge lack of character creation and later character building options.

Combined with the notion of encouraged death, it makes it very difficult for me to care about my characters, as I don't have much, if any, influence on their life. It's more get-gud than get-creative, if that makes sense.

The main issue being with Battle Brothers that if you died and started a new game, you started with the exact same characters again, and adding new characters would then rely entirely upon RNG via whatever nobs were at whatever towns. This game seems to have gone a similar route (?).

It would have been so great if you had a pool of races and classes to create from for the starting party and then to buy anyone you wanted, with just the level gated by price which you get to level-up yourself (like Pathfinder Kingmaker's mercenaries).

And then the levelling system itself doesn't seem wonderfully exciting, more Diabloesque, with lots of points that you (almost) always put into the same thing.

Combined again with RNG for map and action points and it just feels so much more roguelike than RPG that I find myself losing interest very fast. I've tried quite a few roguelikes over the years, but even the best ones just don't have enough of that special RPG sauce to keep me interested in the same way an RPG does.