Of all the Nodebuster clones I have played, this is one of the very weak entries. There are many fundamentally design issues I can see that are either undercooked or requires redesign:
[h2]General[/h2]
- The game is very spawn RNG dependent even at late game. Spawn is sparse and the game never provides a way to deal with that.
In typically Nodebuster clones (even serious early-game offenders like A Game About Feeding A Black Hole), you stop running into spawn RNG issues very quickly because spawn density ramp up rapidly, and additional mechanics are often chain reaction which helps mitigate spawn variances.
This game, however, has spawn RNG issues from the start to end game. Minion density ramp-up is very slow (and caps at a point too insufficient to cover up possible spawn RNG variances), minions keeps running around, and it's hard to concentrate on dense spots to maximize resource gain.
- As mentioned in another review, the game, for being a Nodebuster clone, is linear in a bad way: the trees are not linear, however every sub-tree have some nodes that massively boosts your resource gain (which you have no way to tell on first playthrough, btw). They are so crucial, you have to prioritize unlocking them to not run into a time/grind wall. The existence of these nodes compared to everything else reduce the whole game into "know and unlock these key nodes, or suffer".
[h2]Story Mode[/h2]
- Early game: As mentioned above, too much minion RNG, minions are too sparse to find good spots to get simultaneous hits, and a lot of grinding for miniscule benefits till unlocking preachers.
- Preachers: from here, the game balance is broken as the most optimal strat till late mid game is to just
get as many minions on a preacher -> activate preacher to stun-lock minions -> keep farming them with your harvest circle on top of this preacher -> lock the preach and every minion on top of it for harvest
This works extra well because by converting the minions, you get double resources from the minions.
As a result, it's even more dependent on minion RNG. On a good round you can get 10+ minions stunlocked on a preachers; on a bad round you only get 3-4 stunlocked. Total resource gain on a good round vs a bad round can differ by 3-4x.
- Mid game: you're pretty much hard walled from the 12k faith goal until you buy most of the Joyous Ascension nodes, which buffs conversion gain to a hilarious degree (9.5x gain of a normal harvest). Then suddenly the meta changes: conversion gain >>> harvest gain.
- Will-o-wisp: completely useless by the point you get it, consider it merely a passive bonus. You're only going into the will-o-wisp tree for that Spiritual Harvest node.
- Totems: This piece of content is actually hilariously unbalanced as it keeps swaying back and forth in usability.
Before mid game, it's laughably weak and inconsequential at this stage, it only increases conversion on hit with a relatively slow fire rate and small range, and doesn't give any resources on hit. In terms of benefit it's even worse than lightning.
Totem suddenly becomes useful once conversion gain >>> harvest gain, and then they quickly become useless again as minions get converted too quickly even by you (maxed harvester conversion rate is 4 hits to convert) as soon as they spawn. This is because minions spawn rate is [b]absolutely abyssmal[/b] (it's 2 every 3s before Hole), at which point totems stop doing anything.
As you progress to late game, totems become useless again for a different reason: totems always surround the center and cover, at best, 1/3 of the entire area, so if you focus on killing minions most minions respawn on the sides, which aren't covered by any totems. At this point barely any minions are getting converted.
- Monster: they're... fine I guess? They quickly become fire-and-forget and usually doesn't suck when blindly triggered, as they set their direction to the nearest minion when triggered.
- Soul: it works against earlier resources, getting more soul will cause you to get less of others, vice versa.
Increasing guilt and fear gain requires more minions, but increasing soul gain requires killing minions, which reduces their amount.
Similarly, by the time you can get soul, most of your faith gain comes from conversion, which killing minions before conversion will hurt.
- Slot machine: okay, legit question: why should I bother playing with it? it gives a temporary bonus, and it's random...
[h2]Oversights[/h2]
- The mission system isn't unlocked at first, but the stats for each mission isn't counted until the system is unlocked. The respective Steam achievements are tied these missions so they don't retroactively count the stats either.
- Faithful Delay (probability for conversion to give extra time) apparently has a hard cap on total time gain on a round that is not displayed or mentioned anywhere. This is not a good or transparent design.
[h2]Challenge mode[/h2]
Uhh, what should I say... it is dumbed down to a degree it becomes completely uninteresting (minions + harvest/kill only), and you can max out the upgrade tree way before finishing all 3 goals.
The wording here is also misleading: "Balance upgrades carefully" implies build management under fixed resource cap, but the mode is actually just a minimal rounds mode.
