Indie The First Berseker: Khazan

[Zazen]

One more month guys.

 

[Valhoven]

One more month guys.

I struggled against Yetuga in the demo. Fight felt like poking him to death with a toothpick. How’d you find it? You reckon weapons pass will be done to tweak balance?

 

[Zazen]

I struggled against Yetuga in the demo. Fight felt like poking him to death with a toothpick. How’d you find it? You reckon weapons pass will be done to tweak balance?

Did you fight him in the closed beta or this current demo? He was way harder in the closed beta. It took me like two hours to get him lol. In the recent demo I beat him on second try. They reduced his damage and also made regular attacks do more damage on him. In the closed beta you had to deplete his stamina to do any real sort of damage. Also after you beat him in the demo now you can switch over to an easy mode so if you really do struggle in the game it looks like they have a difficulty setting. Wonder if it will affect trophies or at all and also curious how end game and new game plus will work.

 

[HHJ]

That guys too pretty to be a berserker.

 

[Zazen]

58 trophies confirmed. 48 Bronze, 8 Silver, 1 Gold, and 1 Platinum. Not going to look or post for obvious reasons. Definitely a game I want to get the plat for. Been obsessed with this since I played the demo. It’s so good. Just hoping I get through high rank in Monster Hunter Wilds before this drops.

 

[Valhoven]

How is it?

Honestly, I'm torn.

There are manyfold more things I like about the game than dislike. I'll throw 3 things at you I'm unhappy with and have me waffling, though.

One is the palette/coloring. Bland, bland, bland. Greys, whites, blues, And flat lighting FX and values. So flat that I can't tell if I'm going to veer right or left from path until I'm right in front of the turn.

Two is related in map/area design. Basic. Stuff we've seen and played for decades, literally. I ended up walking the latter half of the demo in reverse and I saw so many cool assets the devs created – like years-frozen yetis, super cool, abandoned village housing, and so on. But you can't see sheet without effort because the coloring and map are so bland with afterthought art direction.

Last thing I don't like are the weapon movesets. They're cool but limited. This game has an awesome evasion or dash strike that few games do; it's great. But it's not enough after looking over the skill trees to deepen enough the weapons arts, IMO.

Big takeaway is whoever preordered this, will be getting a very polished game on launch. Game is tight; they must have bug-smashed the F out of this thing. I tested some map boundaries and everything was fall DMG/death where it should be and not where it shouldn't – small crags and rocky places all tight too without broken char collision what have you.

 

[Fraz]

Honestly, I'm torn.

There are manyfold more things I like about the game than dislike. I'll throw 3 things at you I'm unhappy with and have me waffling, though.

One is the palette/coloring. Bland, bland, bland. Greys, whites, blues, And flat lighting FX and values. So flat that I can't tell if I'm going to veer right or left from path until I'm right in front of the turn.

Two is related in map/area design. Basic. Stuff we've seen and played for decades, literally. I ended up walking the latter half of the demo in reverse and I saw so many cool assets the devs created – like years-frozen yetis, super cool, abandoned village housing, and so on. But you can't see sheet without effort because the coloring and map are so bland with afterthought art direction.

Last thing I don't like are the weapon movesets. They're cool but limited. This game has an awesome evasion or dash strike that few games do; it's great. But it's not enough after looking over the skill trees to deepen enough the weapons arts, IMO.

Big takeaway is whoever preordered this, will be getting a very polished game on launch. Game is tight; they must have bug-smashed the F out of this thing. I tested some map boundaries and everything was fall DMG/death where it should be and not where it shouldn't – small crags and rocky places all tight too without broken char collision what have you.

Thanks for the write up I tried the demo just 15 mins seems promising and like a decent challenge. Will defo get it at somepoint

 

[Valhoven]

Thanks for the write up I tried the demo just 15 mins seems promising and like a decent challenge. Will defo get it at somepoint

Always.

They actually tease all that's to come in a post-demo cinematic and it gets you pretty hyped, ha. The final boss fight of the demo is just rad, too – very fun despite high visual clutter. There's char progress carryover to full game at launch, to add, which means levelling or farming certain enemies for armor drops isn't for naught.

It's a cool game and one in a very solid state for launch.

 

[Valhoven]

Anyone else find the antagonist VA to be annoying? They have him demonically laugh in punctuation of almost every sentence. I thought it so trite or overdone.

If I buy, I might look into playing subtitled to change audio language, too. These British accents games use when nothing to do with England are just unpleasant to listen to. Developers are Korean and the char is of a barbarian tribe whose name is Persian-influenced, ffs. These cats ain't Londoners, lol.

 

[High Test With da Best]

These British accents games use when nothing to do with England are just unpleasant to listen to. Developers are Korean and the char is of a barbarian tribe whose name is Persian-influenced, ffs. These cats ain't Londoners, lol.

That's a good point. I don't play many games, but am working through Elden Ring again.

Since it's not an anime, the welsh/British accents work fine in it and don't seem out of place.

But then I started thinking about possibilities of future mods for games that would have "speech recognition voice transfer" for lack of knowledge of a better term. This paired with character skin/full replacement could make for some really whacky customizations and help make games more universally personal independant of the player's location.

For example, just imagine Melina from ER being changed to a hulking He-Man type charactor Melinor complete with the original dialogue changed to sound like a power lifter!

"Tarnished, I'll be your maiden master, if you'll have me"



Crucible knights could be changed to Bub Rub and come at you doing the "Woo-WOOT" although I guess that'd be possible now anyway.

 

[Zazen]

Anyone else find the antagonist VA to be annoying? They have him demonically laugh in punctuation of almost every sentence. I thought it so trite or overdone.

If I buy, I might look into playing subtitled to change audio language, too. These British accents games use when nothing to do with England are just unpleasant to listen to. Developers are Korean and the char is of a barbarian tribe whose name is Persian-influenced, ffs. These cats ain't Londoners, lol.

I don’t think I’ve ever disagreed with you so much as I do here. You want to change the language? Bro we’ve got Margit The Fell Omen and Clive Rosfield as the main characters. Those are two talented voice actors and most studios that focus on action games don’t even give a shit to go after talent like that. And also speaking of where devs come from that also shouldn’t matter imo. Theres sucker punch making Japanese setting games using an English voice cast and on the other side you have Kojima making games with mostly non-Asian Hollywood stars. You can change the language if you want but considering the team put out a video introducing the voice cast I’m pretty sure this is the one they want to stick with as the default. It reminds me of how Yoshida stuck with the English voice cast over the Japanese one for FFXVI.

 

[Valhoven]

I don’t think I’ve ever disagreed with you so much as I do here. You want to change the language? Bro we’ve got Margit The Fell Omen and Clive Rosfield as the main characters. Those are two talented voice actors and most studios that focus on action games don’t even give a shit to go after talent like that. And also speaking of where devs come from that also shouldn’t matter imo. Theres sucker punch making Japanese setting games using an English voice cast and on the other side you have Kojima making games with mostly non-Asian Hollywood stars. You can change the language if you want but considering the team put out a video introducing the voice cast I’m pretty sure this is the one they want to stick with as the default. It reminds me of how Yoshida stuck with the English voice cast over the Japanese one for FFXVI.

You like or think highly of antag VA?

For me, textbook trite in delivery while through no fault of VA cheapened more so by the Saturday-morning-cartoon writing.

Your soul…HAHAHAHA…belongs to ME! HAHAHA. Don’t fight IT! HAHAHAH.

Bad, bad, bad re antag, IMO.

Developer origin doesn’t matter, you’re right; embellishment to drive point home in being a culture only known to them in consultancy or study.

On language, I play games in the audio native or more natural to titular chars where possible. Always been my thing but we subtitle everything in Nordics (no dubbing like mainland Europe) so it’s comfortable to me to see text in another language than what’s being spoken.

I only played Tsushima for example in Japanese and never heard the English VO. I’ll search language packs for Plus game Lost Crown (PoP) too, for example, and see if they’ve Farsi or something regionally neighboring like Turkish, which would be rad.

 

[Zazen]

You like or think highly of antag VA?

For me, textbook trite in delivery while through no fault of VA cheapened more so by the Saturday-morning-cartoon writing.

Your soul…HAHAHAHA…belongs to ME! HAHAHA. Don’t fight IT! HAHAHAH.

Bad, bad, bad re antag, IMO.

Developer origin doesn’t matter, you’re right; embellishment to drive point home in being a culture only known to them in consultancy or study.

On language, I play games in the audio native or more natural to titular chars where possible. Always been my thing but we subtitle everything in Nordics (no dubbing like mainland Europe) so it’s comfortable to me to see text in another language than what’s being spoken.

I only played Tsushima for example in Japanese and never heard the English VO. I’ll search language packs for Plus game Lost Crown (PoP) too, for example, and see if they’ve Farsi or something regionally neighboring like Turkish, which would be rad.

You should play Kingdom Come Deliverance or Assassins Creed Mirage. I’ve heard both are respectful and took the time to get the language and accents down. I just don’t think we can expect much from nations like Japan and South Korea which are extremely homogeneous. It’s like expecting Americans to know the nuances of Mandarin and the different dialects for each region. Even harder because at least America is diverse, these nations have not many people to consult with. Personally I’m of the mindset that this is an action game and story is not the priority. At the very least I appreciate them getting some good voice actors and that’s much better than what I grew up with. Action games of the past had horrendous voice acting so at least we’ve seen improvements there. I honestly can’t recall him being that annoying, I’m exhausted by the end of the day after working and running after a two year old that I kind of tune our dialogue unless I’m planning an RPG where the story is essential to the enjoyment

 

[Valhoven]

You should play Kingdom Come Deliverance or Assassins Creed Mirage. I’ve heard both are respectful and took the time to get the language and accents down. I just don’t think we can expect much from nations like Japan and South Korea which are extremely homogeneous. It’s like expecting Americans to know the nuances of Mandarin and the different dialects for each region. Even harder because at least America is diverse, these nations have not many people to consult with. Personally I’m of the mindset that this is an action game and story is not the priority. At the very least I appreciate them getting some good voice actors and that’s much better than what I grew up with. Action games of the past had horrendous voice acting so at least we’ve seen improvements there. I honestly can’t recall him being that annoying, I’m exhausted by the end of the day after working and running after a two year old that I kind of tune our dialogue unless I’m planning an RPG where the story is essential to the enjoyment

Fair.

I’ve been interested in KCDII so appreciate the recommend. It’s hard to pull the trigger though when in my head, I’ve always likened KCD combat to Chivalry franchise, which I don’t like. Everyone saying the improved KCD archery whatnot in the sequel has had the game top of my watchlist, though.

 

[Valhoven]

So, for PS players application file will be 27GB and can be preloaded next Saturday for deluxe edition owners.

Standard berserkers can load game the following Tuesday on 25.3.

Enjoy, guys!

 

[Zazen]

So, for PS players application file will be 27GB and can be preloaded next Saturday for deluxe edition owners.

Standard berserkers can load game the following Tuesday on 25.3.

Enjoy, guys!

Are you getting this? Despite your criticisms you seem to be following the game quite a bit. Seems part of you is looking forward to it. I did buy the deluxe one to get it on the 24th so thanks for the update. Can’t wait, already completed the demo. Didn’t overlevel my character. I still want a challenge

 

[Valhoven]

Are you getting this? Despite your criticisms you seem to be following the game quite a bit. Seems part of you is looking forward to it. I did buy the deluxe one to get it on the 24th so thanks for the update. Can’t wait, already completed the demo. Didn’t overlevel my character. I still want a challenge

Honest answer is I still don’t know.

Finished demo too at SL19, I think. I levelled up a bit pre-Yetuga because I hit a wall with him. Blade Phantom, however, I beat on my third try (easy moveset to memorise but visually awesome fight) so I’m unsure if overlevelled but doubt it. Conversely, game may have yo-yoing difficulty imbalance, which plague even the most veteran, well-funded developers.

I also don't know if enemies scale with you but I suspect as much when all drops are guaranteed to level-match your char.

I like the game, full stop, but combat maybe isn’t deep enough for what I'd envisioned. It was good, though. C’est la vie.

 

[Zazen]

The devs said this game would be 80 hours long. Some players who are currently playing (embargo not lifted until Monday) said the main story is 60 hours with about 15 to 20 hours of optional side quests. Also, apparently the game opens up with branching paths after 20 hours or so. I’m finding this hard to believe but maybe it’s true considering early access players match what the devs were saying. Way bigger than I expected if true. I was thinking more like 30 hours. @Valhoven If this is true does it make you more likely to buy or less?

 

[Valhoven]

The devs said this game would be 80 hours long. Some players who are currently playing (embargo not lifted until Monday) said the main story is 60 hours with about 15 to 20 hours of optional side quests. Also, apparently the game opens up with branching paths after 20 hours or so. I’m finding this hard to believe but maybe it’s true considering early access players match what the devs were saying. Way bigger than I expected if true. I was thinking more like 30 hours. @Valhoven If this is true does it make you more likely to buy or less?

Honestly, likelier, yeah. Good stuff. I want to know, though, how many weapons we get over those 80h in addition to the three we demo'd. Those numbers are hard to believe TBH, lol. I was thinking 30h for story but that's side quests alone? Dang.

 

[method115]

The devs said this game would be 80 hours long. Some players who are currently playing (embargo not lifted until Monday) said the main story is 60 hours with about 15 to 20 hours of optional side quests. Also, apparently the game opens up with branching paths after 20 hours or so. I’m finding this hard to believe but maybe it’s true considering early access players match what the devs were saying. Way bigger than I expected if true. I was thinking more like 30 hours. @Valhoven If this is true does it make you more likely to buy or less?

Damn 80 hours seems way to long for a game like this.