Rift Wizard 3

Good

Quite a cool game so far. The gameplay trailers for all the Rift Wizard games aren't great imo since they just show lategame fullscreen AoE combos which make the game look both confusing and disorienting. Early game is nothing like that when using more basic spells like fireball, chain lightning or summon elemental drake. Pros: -Has decent and palatable graphics now. I usually set my standards at 16-bit console graphics at a minimum, and only make exceptions for a few bangers like Caves of Qud or ToME4, which is part of the reason I never tried the first 2 Rift Wizard games. -Tons of buildcrafting options with 500 spells, equipment and such. -I like the spell points and equipment crafting systems. -The spell upgrades are actually interesting and not just all stat boosts. A lifedrain DoT spell I had could be upgraded to get more range, or be AoE and pulsing drain per turn, or stack infinitely instead of replacing existing stacks with a new duration. Other spells can be modified to have different elements, have new effects when cast on environmental tiles, resistance shredding, etc. Cons: -The game is very overwhelming at first. It would be much better if RW3 progressively unlocked spells and equipment as you play, which would also feel rewarding, instead of there being a brick wall of spells to read and choose from right at the first 5 minutes of gameplay. I'm purposely playing on the 'Limited Spellbook' challenge mode that locks out 80% of spells at random just so I can get familiar with a variety of spells without being overloaded with options. With how comically hard the game is, it's not like I'll get a win within the first 50 hours anyways. -Speaking of difficulty, the difficulty curve needs some serious work. I did get to Stage 6 of 20 on my first few tries (which alot of people with many more hours than I apparently get stuck at), but I was getting 100-0'd in one turn from range which was pretty rough. I don't want to have to spend 5 minutes reading every enemy's entire description before every fight to have a chance. Seems like it's that kind of game though, especially with there being over 400 enemy types. It'll probably take many more hours to become familiar with the enemies. Also, the difficulty jump from floor 4-6 can be massive. There's sometimes a random boss with 800-1200 hp in some of the floor 5 or 6 areas, and other times not (?). The enemies before this generally have around 10-40 hp. This vast discrepancy makes very little logical sense. -The game should probably allow you to start in a safe zone if you so choose. Every other TRPG in existence, such as FFT/Mewgenics/XCOM, spawn you across the map from enemies to allow you time to prepare for battle and plan out a strategy. In RW3 you just spawn in the middle of enemies (location of your choosing, but you'll always be very close to multiple enemies) which means you need to have summons or AoE damage or else you're already dead as soon as the round starts. In the end there's a lot of mind-boggling design decisions in this series, but with the vast amount of interesting buildcraft options, I will probably put a lot of time into this series. It's extremely challenging (and I generally play games on hard or higher difficulty). We're talking 11/10 difficulty with no options to choose from to make it easier, and it seems like half puzzle game, half TRPG. Good luck, wizard. You'll need it. Edit: Took about 7 hours to really get into it, but now that I've been crafting equipment much more intelligibly I've had MUCH more success, it's like a whole different game now! Chain Lightning is fun and has some crunchy SFX, so when it bounces around 50+ times, it tears haha. 9/10 perhaps, even while in Early Access. Tons of content, just needs some polish and QoL such as better tooltips and status descriptions (some statuses are missing from the Help menu).