Tales of the Rampant Coyote

Adventures in Indie Gaming!

Frayed Knights Review at RPGamer

Posted by Rampant Coyote on November 1, 2011

Not an entirely glowing review this time – the reviewer’s primary criticism is the amount of randomness involved in the game, where Benjamin might hit for more damage than Arianna sometimes, or a character might go twice in a row (which may be due to haste, or simply the last person on one round getting lucky the following round).

But he still has plenty of good things to say about the game:

RPGamer’s Frayed Knights: The Skull of S’makh-Daon Review

I personally think of the randomness as being more of a feature than a bug (Except for the spells-missing more than they should thing, which is a bug fixed in version 1.04 but sadly existed in the original release version). Consistency is a good thing, and mathematically the numbers have worked out to provide pretty decent “groupings” in my tests, but in contested actions, particularly the heat of battle, a wider variation of results feels more believable to me. Less gamey, admittedly, but it feels more interesting to me when you do have to plan for contingencies and the occasional failure. That’s why there are drama star abilities like Fool’s Luck – to help mitigate the variance when it really, REALLY counts.

But that’s a design approach that clearly doesn’t appeal to everybody, and I knowingly chose to go that route with Frayed Knights.

 


Filed Under: Frayed Knights - Comments: 4 Comments to Read



  • Josh said,

    The reviewer’s biggest gripe seems to be about missing in combat. Seems like his overall opinion would have been significantly different if not for that. Unfortunate.

    His suggestion that the use of dice is, itself, the cause of excessively long battles is incorrect. For example, I could design a fight where you never miss, but need 1,000 rounds of battle before the enemy dies. Or I could design a fight where you have a 50% chance of hitting, but the enemy dies with one hit. Average battle length: 2 rounds.

  • Daniel King said,

    Yeah the reviewer disliked the randomness of it all, I suspect it wont bother the majority however even the reviewer noted,

    “Conceivably it might strike some out there as the greatest thing since sliced bread, and anyone like that should flock to Rampant Games’ site in order to buy the game immediately.”

  • Rampant Coyote said,

    I appreciated that he acknowledged this. For someone who grew up playing console jRPGs and action-RPGs, I can totally see the randomness being something you’d have to adjust to (or not). I mean, I compare the randomness to what you normally get in a roguelike, and I think FK is downright *predictable* by comparison. But compared to some jRPGs I’ve played (and enjoyed) — well, I get used to either doing a predictable amount (or range) of damage for a particular level / combo against certain types of monsters, with a slim chance of missing and a less-slim chance of critting. And that’s it. And that’s fun, too.

  • Rats said,

    reviews are a coin flip

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