For Sommerlund and the Kai! -- Lone Wolf Remastered

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > For Sommerlund and the Kai! -- Lone Wolf Remastered

Wise Learned Man: Apr 22, 2008; by Jeffrey of YOSPOS; Lipstick Apathy

At long last, Lone Wolf has returned to PC!¹

What is it?

Lone Wolf Remastered (officially Joe Dever's Lone Wolf HD Remastered, but that's a bit much of a mouthful) is an updated PC port of the Android/iOS game from last year. It combines gamebook-style text descriptions (basically Choose-Your-Own-Adventure, if you're not familiar with the Lone Wolf gamebooks) with a branching storyline, animated monochrome art, and fully-3D turn-based combat.

As the Steam store page puts it:

quote:

Lone Wolf is back, as a video game with a brand-new story, a deep combat system, stunning graphics and much more! Make meaningful choices and carve your own path through this epic non-linear adventure. Test your strength in dynamic turn-based battles, prove your skill with the lock-picking minigame and accept the challenge of wits posed by the mysterious Shianti Cube! The author Joe Dever has played an active role in the development of the game. The story he has written fits with the original continuity, but it also sheds a new light on Lone Wolf�s world, Magnamund!

So who are Lone Wolf and Joe Dever, Anyway?

Joe Dever is an author and game designer who created the high fantasy world of Magnamund as a setting for tabletop roleplaying in the 1970s. Starting in 1984 with the publication of Lone Wolf: Flight from the Dark, Dever translated the setting to a long-running series of gamebooks. The titular character, Lone Wolf, is the last surviving member of the ancient Kai Order, a sect of psychic warrior monks who totally kick rear end against the Darklords and their pseudo-orc minions. Lone Wolf himself is basically Aragorn meets Geralt of Rivia. No relation to Lone Wolf and Cub.

There's a lot to the setting, perhaps best learned by checking out EndOfTheWorld's and Ashenai's awesome Let's Play of the first 20 books (the complete Kai, Magnakai, and Grandmaster series), done right here on these very forums from 2007-2008. _{Funfact: After lurking for years, that thread is what convinced me to finally register here.}

How does it play?

Take a look:

These gives you an idea of how it looks during the gamebook portions. Text on the left (click+drag or doubleclick to turn pages), character info on the right. You make choices by selecting applicable Kai disciplines or equipment.

Here is the map. You have choices about where you go and in what order you visit critical locations.

The lockpicking minigame, shamelessly cribbed from Skyrim. There is also another minigame that is more of a puzzle:

Here you manipulate the magic cube to make it match the given shape and unlock a door or chest.

Turn-based combat.² On your turn, you click one of those blue circles to choose one of your weapon attacks (axes, maces, and swords, with three special attacks for each style), off-hand skills (shields or other weapons, each with three abilities), ranged weapon (throwing knives or crossbow), and Kai disciplines (psionics & magic). Everything costs stamina or Kai power, so you have to manage your resources carefully. You also have the Sommerswerd, a powerful artifact weapon, which has its own set of magical attacks. Everything you'd expect to see from the gamebooks is represented here.

Here is a video that gives you an idea of what the combat is like.

List time, shamelessly copied and pasted from the Steam page:

Steam posted:

HD Remastered Edition enhancements:

A seamless experience that includes all 4 acts of the story. Discover what happened at the frontier village of Rockstarn, explore the Sunken Forest and unveil the secrets of the Shianti Temple. Then, take the fight to the enemy storming the fortress of V�taag. Are you ready to write your own destiny?

Improved graphics. Enjoy new lighting effects, high resolution textures and particles: precious details that can be appreciated only in this HD Remastered version.

A brand-new Gallery that includes both pre-production artwork and 3D models. Discover how the designers and the artists created the game world!

Bonus content included (access the game local files to retrieve it): Original soundtrack in MP3 format and Digital artbook.

Key Features:

A brand-new adventure written by Joe Dever, with a deep and dark redesign of Lone Wolf, his world and his enemies.

A real medieval tome with hand-drawn illustrations.

Create your character and try out different combinations of Kai Disciplines, traits and gear.

Write your own story through multiple choices.

A real combat system, where your prowess really counts �no random number table or dice to throw!

Wield Lone Wolf�s signature weapon, the Sommerswerd, to unleash devastating attacks that can change the tide of any battle!

3 different difficulty levels to make the fighting experience more accessible -or more challenging!

Play again, make different choices and explore new paths and fighting styles!

Also:

Things I personally really enjoyed, inspiring me to make this thread:

The Sommerswerd!
You unlock codex entries as you meet people, defeat enemies, and travel places. These are pretty extensive.
There are also galleries of concept art and character/monster renders that you unlock as you go along.
There is a good amount of variety in weapon choice, discipline options, and encounter outcomes. Probably not enough to make more than 2 playthroughs especially interesting, but good for this kind of game.
They really nailed the experience of reading and playing through the gamebooks. Maximum nostalgia.
The controls are perfectly good with mouse & keyboard, something a lot of mobile ports gently caress up.
There's a surprising variety of loot & equipment on offer, both scavenged and purchased. Nobody is gonna mistake this for Diablo, but it was better than I expected.

Things you might not like, in the interest of fairness:

There are QTEs, and a few of them are rather unintuitive at first. They are easy to master, however.
Combat can be repetitive ~~if you don't take any stealth-related disciplines and can't sidestep some encounters.~~ Before long you can't really do much to avoid combat except in rare cases, just use disciplines or plot choices to make it easier (or harder if you are unlucky, don't have appropriate stats for your choice, or fail a QTE).
Also, backtracking to sell poo poo usually results in a bunch of random encounters, which can be tedious if you just want to get back to the next story location.
Maybe I just suck, but I took a lot of damage pretty much every combat and had to manage my health a lot. ~~A parrying/dodging mechanic would have been welcome.~~ *Protip: use the bottom shield ability to enable dodging/parrying!
~~It is likely not very long, as it only took me a couple hours to play through the first of four acts.~~³
The soundtrack is only 7 tracks. The artbook is pretty nice though.
As in the books, you have to make some hard choices about what abilities to carry, and you may sometimes feel like you're missing out on certain options based on what you didn't pick.
Not a ton of enemy variety, ~~though that's true of the books as well.~~ [Just leafed through a few of the books and this isn't really accurate.]

How do I get the game?
It's on Steam for ~~$14.99~~ $13.49 through December 4th.

Links:
http://www.projectaon.org/en/blog/ Project Aon. Free releases of all 30-something books in HTML format.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lone_Wolf_%28gamebooks%29 The Wikipedia page on the Lone Wolf series.
http://lonewolf.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page The Lone Wolf Wiki. Not super-detailed, but good for background information on the characters and setting.
http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=2653690 The brilliant Lone Wolf series Let's Play from 2008. Requires Archives.

For Sommerlund and the Kai! :black101:

¹_{Previously appeared in 1991's Lone Wolf: The Mirror of Death}
²_{I'm told it's more like active time battle than true turn-based combat. You do get turns and your opponents get turns, but on your turn the time to select each category of attack ticks down, but it pauses while choosing individual abilities. With a little practice, you can chug a potion, activate a Kai discipline, make two or three melee attacks, one or two ranged attacks, and an off-hand offensive or defensive ability all in one turn.}
³_{Later acts are much longer than Act I. Currently at 13+ hours through most of Act IV (of IV). Total playtime updated as I go.}

Wise Learned Man fucked around with this message at 05:36 on Dec 4, 2014

# ¿ Nov 28, 2014 02:30

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# ¿ May 15, 2024 03:20

Wise Learned Man: Apr 22, 2008; by Jeffrey of YOSPOS; Lipstick Apathy

Really Pants posted:

The bad guys in the books eventually had all kinds of crazy poo poo like NBC weaponry, nuclear submarines, starfighters and laser guns. Is there any of that here?

Not that I've seen so far. Looks to be pretty much straight fantasy as far as I can tell.

# ¿ Nov 28, 2014 02:42

Wise Learned Man: Apr 22, 2008; by Jeffrey of YOSPOS; Lipstick Apathy

ZeeToo posted:

Lone Wolf and the OP says it's not terrible? Sold! I'm installing now.

I found the gamebooks in the form of a damaged library book when I was a preteen, and it rather caught my imagination. I pretty much have to give this a spin and see how it is.

You can relive those days with the free html versions of all the books from Project Aon.

# ¿ Nov 28, 2014 03:27

Wise Learned Man: Apr 22, 2008; by Jeffrey of YOSPOS; Lipstick Apathy

Scalding Coffee posted:

How come I never heard about this earlier? Dever!

Yeah, I never even knew there was a mobile game until I saw this on Steam yesterday. Made for a nice escape from the in-laws today.

# ¿ Nov 28, 2014 04:12

Wise Learned Man: Apr 22, 2008; by Jeffrey of YOSPOS; Lipstick Apathy

Jackard posted:

I got the Android version a while back but its buggy and frequent realtime hard-hitting combat with long loadtimes was infuriating enough to make me uninstall. Just let me use a bow to skip the fight for once, goddammit.

Has the PC port improved that any?

Loading before/after combat is basically instant. Haven't come across any bugs myself, but :shrug:

Combat is kinda hard, but I did just start using a shield and there is an active dodge mechanic after all (it does cost endurance though).

E: oh, ninja'd. yeah, it'd be nice if there was a way to speed up combat, as it gets a little stale when you've seen those animations a millions times each.

Wise Learned Man fucked around with this message at 04:51 on Nov 28, 2014

# ¿ Nov 28, 2014 04:48

Wise Learned Man: Apr 22, 2008; by Jeffrey of YOSPOS; Lipstick Apathy

Jackard posted:

Also I wouldn't call this turnbased, this is really more of an ATB system.

Yeah, I don't really play strategy games, but I wasn't sure what else to call it. I'll update the OP so it isn't misleading.

# ¿ Nov 28, 2014 19:39

Wise Learned Man: Apr 22, 2008; by Jeffrey of YOSPOS; Lipstick Apathy

There were also a couple fan-made Lone Wolf modules for Neverwinter Nights back in the day that were pretty fun, though I just googled looking for them and could only find some random forum threads here and there talking about them. I hope all that stuff wasn't lost when Neverwinter Vault died.

E: Actually, they are still around! The original Neverwinter Vault is dead, but there's another one now: http://neverwintervault.org/project/nwn1/module/lone-wolf-ch1-test-sun-ch2-mysteries-night No idea how I missed that when looking earlier.

Wise Learned Man fucked around with this message at 21:29 on Nov 30, 2014

# ¿ Nov 30, 2014 21:25

Wise Learned Man: Apr 22, 2008; by Jeffrey of YOSPOS; Lipstick Apathy

This game's length is a pleasant surprise. Steam says I have 7.4 hours played and I'm only to the end of Act II (of IV). Act I was pretty short (I'm guessing it was free in the mobile version?), so if II-IV are all the same length, I'll get 15+ hours out of this on just one playthrough.

Unfortunately, RedFang the elite gourgaz is just ruining my poo poo right now. I use everything I can in the first round and can barely drop him below half health, but he can't be stunned and his attacks can't be parried. On his turn he does an unblockable stomp attack that drops me from full health to near death AND stuns me so I can't even try to evade the followup attack.

Still, having a lot of fun. Came across a couple of those classic Dever bullshit instadeaths--one was perfectly fair and the other punished me for being cautious (DEVER!!! :argh:

)--and yet I'm still motivated to play through it again with different disciplines and path choices to unlock all the extras. Pretty darn nice little package, all told.

# ¿ Dec 1, 2014 06:18

Wise Learned Man: Apr 22, 2008; by Jeffrey of YOSPOS; Lipstick Apathy

Deep in Act IV now, at a little over 13 hours played. I'm still enjoying it, though there are a few grating issues that suggest some things weren't all that well thought-out. For example, there's only one place to repair equipment in Act III (I only found one place anyway, and I explored everywhere I could), and I ran into so many random battles on my way back through the end of the Act and into IV that my sword was broken by the time I got to the repair spot in Act IV, so I had to make do with an un-upgraded inferior replacement, which made a couple fights noticeably tougher.

Tough as I found the gourgaz previously, vordaks are a whole new level of bullshit. I don't mind hard games, but some of the fights can seem pretty unfair. If you're missing the wrong disciplines or make the wrong story choices in how to evade or deal with a group of enemies, you might not get to go first in combat, and can often end up dead before you even get a turn. Admittedly, my guy has pretty low health, but some fights took me eight or ten tries to get through. Enemies start dodging and parrying a lot more too. I do like the feel of having to use every ability, potion, and special weapon just to scrape by, but sometimes you get locked into a string of battles that wear you down to much. There's also no indicator if there's going to be another wave of enemies, which sometimes makes it hard to plan ahead. More than once I've blown all my disciplines to finish off a tough enemy, only to have a couple more show up and slaughter me before my next turn. The cooldowns for everything but your most basic attacks seem pretty long too.

Anyway, after I'm done I'll probably take a break before another playthrough, but I do wanna see the alternate paths and what other disciplines will do. At some point I'll probably post some tips and stuff, but here are a few lifesavers in case anybody else finds this thread and finds it tough going at first:

Try to land the finishing moves by hitting the final prompt on the last enemy in a group, because it refills your kai meter a pretty good amount (plus it makes you feel like a badass ).
Stick with whatever weaponstyle your character creation choices give you, because you can realistically only unlock all the attack upgrades for one style in a given playthrough.
Use the sommerswerd early and often even on weak enemies, because you can unlock upgrades for each of its abilities, and they take a while.
Camouflage is a useful discipline because it lets you skip combat encounters now and then and its in-combat ability (one round of unblockable attacks and improved parry/dodge) is pretty useful.
Weaponmastery doesn't come up much in story choices, but its combat ability--making attacks cost no endurance for one turn--is something I used in every battle.
Activating survival gives you health regen with every successful attack for one turn, which is critical when you have potions on cooldown or don't get to go first in combat.
I took mindblast/mindshield (they're combined in this game) and found mindblast to be a waste of kai power in combat, though it can be used at points in the story to make an upcoming group of enemies easier. Mindshield presumably does help a lot versus vordaks, though I don't know exactly how much damage it prevents.
Don't worry so much about upgrading your weapon and shield at first, since you'll find better ones in each successive act. Upgrading the backpack is also probably a waste of gold and crafting materials, since you'll find additional inventory bags regularly. Upgrading your armor is expensive and requires a lot of rare materials, but seems worth it.
Health, kai power, and endurance increase at the end of each chapter based on what approaches you've selected. As far as I can tell, weaponmastery and the use force/be aggressive (red fist icon) add to health and strength, lockpicking and evasion/agility options (yellow jumping icon) increase dex and endurance, and camouflage and the cautious choices (green contemplation icon) increase kai power.

Wise Learned Man fucked around with this message at 05:31 on Dec 4, 2014

# ¿ Dec 4, 2014 05:22

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# ¿ May 15, 2024 03:20

Wise Learned Man: Apr 22, 2008; by Jeffrey of YOSPOS; Lipstick Apathy

Really Pants posted:

The bad guys in the books eventually had all kinds of crazy poo poo like NBC weaponry, nuclear submarines, starfighters and laser guns. Is there any of that here?

I have a better response to this now: This takes place between books 3 and 4 I guess, so none of the crazy poo poo they got into in some of the Grandmaster books, but the main goal of the plot is to keep a darklord from using a high-tech engine based on ancient technology as a weapon of mass destruction, by stealing back the prototype before he can figure out how to use it.

# ¿ Dec 4, 2014 05:28

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > For Sommerlund and the Kai! -- Lone Wolf Remastered