At the time of writing the game build is: Beta 2 - BoisterousBobcat
Click "Read More" to access the Hints/Tips/Tricks/Review
Characters: Characters in StarCrawlers span the gamut of modern scifi tropes. Players can choose from the Cyberninja, Engineer, Force Psyker, Hacker, Smuggler, Soldier, and Void Psycher. Each uses different combat mechanics and unique out-of-combat powers. Also of note is a non-playable (but party-able) combat robot.
Initial notes about selecting a character:
1. All your gear is junk, so replace it ASAP
2. Don't sweat much over who you choose at the beginning, as you can hire each of the other character classes very early in the game (5-10 min in).
3. The first two missions are pre-built as tutorials, you can skip the first one but will be missing out on a few minor rewards like 1 item (weapon), 1 secret item (shield), and some xp and a small amount of money. They recently patched so that when you skip this you still get the weapon.
4. The character descriptions are both useful and deceptive. Character strengths only vaguely outline what characters can do, and weaknesses do little more than outline what they can't do, but this is deceptive as the weaknesses are more like guidelines about how the class is played than real problems.
Now when you start there is still another thing you need to know: out of combat powers. These are special abilities you can do automatically just by having a person of this class in your party (party limit 4). Take special note as some of these are quite nice.
(please note I have played with every character, but some may not be complete or the situations that they shine in may not have fully come up.)
Cyberninja: Haven't found it yet.
Engineer: can sometimes save you from mechanical traps like pressure plates
Force Psyker: Haven't found it yet.
Hacker: They have the extremely useful ability to auto-hack, just click a dialogue box and skip the hack minigame. Also once my hacker allowed me to avoid combat with a robotic turret defense.
Smuggler: They get extra dialogue options, these only appear rarely but often simply lead you to getting more credits. Handy though.
Soldier: Haven't found it yet, though it seems that this character is more aware of the surroundings and sometimes hears/sees things you can interact with. Though it seems like this just triggers a 50/50 enemy or loot randomly generating dialogue screen.
Void Psycher: Haven't found it yet.
Prototype (secret-ish character): I think I've seen him interact with an enemy robot once, but all that did was allow me to avoid the combat.
Skills:
Most skills in the game are useful, but to be competitive you will have to prioritize which order you take them in. Most of the time this means finding a skill like the Engineer's Pneumato-wrench or the Hacker's System Shock passives which simply tag effects on to the basic attacks of the characters. But other times having a spread of tactical options like having a Soldier's Frag Grenade handy to do area damage. Be sure to read all skills before investing as some skills like Mirror Prism require some finesse to use and not kill your Psycher. Luckily the medic back at the station can let you re-spec your skills, so even if you make a mistake you're just a few clicks and a couple hundred credits away from fixing it. Below are some tricks and skill combos to note.
Hints / Tips / Tricks:
- once you build the prototype he stays party hirable for all your other games, so you never have to pay for him again.
- changes in reputation of +/-5 mean almost nothing, so if you run into a bug like not being able to exit a map (I had this one) then just choose to fail the mission and the penalty isnt that bad.
- attempting hard missions and then going in for the xp works well since you can bail at any point without much penalty (see prior note).
- mastering the "Lucrative" skill of the Smuggler and pairing it with "Trick Shot" will net you an un-spendable mound of cash in a short time, easily giving you more cash than missions and barter.
- There are no proficiency in the game, so any character can use any weapon or armor, so always have your team using the best stuff. The only exceptions to this are a few skills in the Ninja and Smuggler which require either a melee weapon or pistol respectively. Otherwise its all fair game. (The Force Psycher and the Prototype have abilities whose effects change based on if a melee or ranged weapon is used, but have no type requirement).
- The Soldier and the Force Psycher are the only characters who can taunt enemies and easily manipulate threat, so give them your best shields and armor.
- The Void Psycher is a balancing act of having lots of void energy but not too much, decent DPS.
- The Force Psycher is the opposite, starting with energy points to spend, but quickly running down, lots of upfront DPS but quickly trailing off.
- The Ninja is good at both single and multi-enemy killing (but better at single) as Dash eventually strikes all enemies on the map, and most of the Tempest abilities attack multiple enemies.
- The Engineer's Junkerbluss ability is a one-shot boss killer, keep it charged for them.
- The Hacker's Root Hack ability, when mastered, is utterly amazing (90% charm chance for 3 turns with 100% accuracy and 100% success the first use per battle).
- Ninja is a walking self-combo machine, check out the flip kick / wheel kick combo.
My Experience:
The way I found to be most survivable was to have a party which had at least one Engineer, Soldier, and Hacker in it (I play the Scoundrel as I enjoy the extra dialogue choices). This way I could breeze through most of the non-combat stuff without wasting my time on traps, and focus on the combat. Early on, combat is relatively easy, but later on, you really have to build characters toward their strengths to survive. This means make the Soldier able to take hits and draw agro for when your other characters get low on HP, I also found overwatch useful. For the Scoundrel I mastered the gunslinger tree immediately as it lets them do decent in and out of turn damage, also flashbang was useful to delay enemy actions. I kept the Engineer around for his junk cannon alpha strike uber kill (for bosses) and the utility of his bot. And the hacker was mostly there to avoid the hacking minigame, but
I'll add an items section once they define exactly what some of the item upgrades do. Right now many seem to be placeholders (Auroch Armor seems to add 5% dodge, but Boomslang doesn't seem to do anything but add value, and things like Test Upgrade seem useless, where others just add to item value).
As far as the review goes I give this Early Access a high rating. It has a few bugs, but the game is functional, beautiful, and interesting. It plays smoothly, the music choice and composition is great, most animations and implemented game features work, and although it can only benefit from more content, the devs have been patching every few days, each time improving the game noticeably.
Rating (with respect to it being an early access game):
Likely Worth Buying (if you like turn based dungeon crawlers)
8/10 in its current state
Cheers,
-Red Mage
I'm just getting into this game. These hints were still helpful, six years later.
ReplyDeleteThanks,
jvincentnix