http://www.spiralknights.com/

Free, action-RPG, semi-MMO.
It's fun. You should play it.

You can pay real money for in-game stuff, but only for "Crystal Energy", which you can purchase with in-game currency anyways. All money is required for is playing faster and, if you die and have to revive much, longer.

I think my IGN is Mistrial

Started few days ago but only played for 1 hour.

Lotta people are making free moving hack and slash games

I think Divine Souls is the best of all the ones to come out right now. http://divinesouls.outspark.com

Never heard of any such trend occurring.
Spiral Knights is the only one of which I'm aware.

Divine Souls' graphic/visual style looks lame, and its overall game design more generic. But I haven't played it, and Spiral Knights' gameplay is admittedly very limited.

Quote from Riney

http://divinesouls.outspark.com

No you. Uncharted Waters Online.

I Heard Dungeon Fighter is a great MMO hack n slash RPG as well

Was fun, but the latency issues made it pretty impossible to play sometimes.

Had a chance to play it.

so far.. it's looking pretty average..
Combat gameplay is lacking substance.. just like many, many MMO's..
The SFX aren't good enough, and when you get hit, it doesn't feel like it really matters.. it's just too abstract and uninteresting.
Also.. lag is still a bit of a drag when playing this game, especially during crowded battles, where enemies teleport around due to lag...

And I can't believe that I've finally disliked the graphics of a cell shaded game... At the beginning, it's okay, but the level design becomes really repetitive after a while. The enemies are generic - Slimes, Spiders, and Skeletons... And the NPC's all say really generic stuff...
It's apparent that their target audience are high schoolers, which is fine, but I'm not a high schooler .

What IS good about the game is its character designs. But it kinda shoots itself in the foot.. because I already start off with an armor set that I'm pretty damn happy about.. especially when I compare it with the pros lingering around Haven (The hub/city thing that MMO's have).

The game was made by Sega I'm pretty sure. I could really see a hedgehog fan enjoying this game ;o

Huge Game Necro Time!!

So, recently, due to my friend getting into this, I've been playing Spiral Knights a whole lot.
The reason why I want to talk about this again is because I want to address some of my mistakes from my previous posts.

Spiral Knights is actually a very intricately designed game, which is both bad and good.
Its level design and enemy design is great. Moreover, its "Gate System" in which players progress in supports the variety in levels and enemies.

I will now attempt to describe it here...

... this is where the game starts to become annoying.
while the core of the game is great and all, there are plenty of redundant design faults.
One thing is that the game takes a while to understand, when it could've been a lot easier.
There're plenty more details to rant about, but I think the worst design fault was its use of "Energy"


.. The problem is, when you are a newbie, you don't have enough money to buy Crystal Energy. So, you'll only have about 100 energy per day. Each time you go down a depth, it costs 10 energy. The playtime basically amounts to 1.5-2 hrs per day, which is hardly enough and becomes a grating hindrance to newbies.
Until you can start spelunking using Crystal Energy alone (and still make a profit, aka, the crystal energy you used to go adventuring will earn you crowns enough to buy back the crystal energy + more, aka, Profit runs), the game is basically slapping your hand like a mother and telling you to do something else.

It is an incredibly redundant and bloated design that, from I know, has stopped many newcomers from playing.

But once you sift through this particular poorly made system, the game does have a lot of things to offer.

Try it..
also, if you do, PM me and I'll craft some 2* weapons for ya

EDIT: Oh yeah.. the comment about the wears already being pretty good.... it's not true.. they become more specialized, and I'm sure ppl like to look special

I'm wondering, in what way is it "redundant" and "bloated"? I can understand not liking it, but I don't really see how those particular terms apply.

I don't like it for the fact that the gameplay feels so simple. It sorta feels like a "Press X to win" game. You just poke poke poke with your sword or lift a pot and step on a key in unison with your team to get to the next area and rinse and repeat.

But, that's like, my opinion, man.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Oct 15 2011, 2:30 pm by MadZombie.

Get to tier 2/3 (also do danger rooms). It's retardedly easy in the beginning stages, and it's not exactly the hardest of games in any stage (so far's I understand. I've hardly played on my computer in a couple months, so my character's still at end tier 2), but difficulty does jump up a lovely bit with each tier.

I want to necro this to see if anyone is playing it still. I just started playing a little last night. It seems very simple, but it is very pretty to look at. I was wondering about the energy thing - if it became necessary later in the game to buy it.

I want to get my boyfriend into it so that we can both play a fun game unless someone else has a comparable game that's fair priced.

It gets to the point of where you will spend 100 energy in less than an hour of game play down the line. This was why I stopped playing.

You mean as in fake difficulty for the sake of getting you to pay more? I was kinda afraid of that.

What's the current exchange rate of CE to CR? Because if it's low enough, you should be able to make 100CE by spending 100 energy (mist) running through a set of dungeons. As you get farther from the entrance and closer to the next tier, the rewards are much greater (and the enemies are also much tougher). I am currently all 5 star gear >_> I stopped playing when I couldn't find enough people to run the boss with.

After a certain point, it seems like the game doesn't get too much harder (though lag must be taken largely into consideration) but rather your gear is only good for helping you run through the lower dungeons faster.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Dec 27 2011, 8:18 am by LegacyWeapon.

Yesterday crowns : energy were like 5000 : 100 or something absurd.

That sounds the same as when I left nearly 4 months ago. That's the correct ratio hahaha.

If you can get to the point where you can profit by spending Crystal energy to go down, then you will never run out of energy.

You can add friend me.. my SK acct is UnholyUrine (obviously)

I also have 5* stuff, started out as a gunner but now want to be a bomber... so still playing it..

The game really do need new stuff to make it harder.. The new shadow lairs are "Hardcore versions" of boss levels, but they require a key, which costs 1500 energy (!!!!) to use.. divide it by four people it still costs 375 energy... which I find ridiculous.