Πρόσφατες κριτικές από τον Sputnik Monroe

This game is just great. My buddies and I get together for a board game night nearly every week and when we are done with whichever game we are playing we move into the living room and play Ultimate Chicken Horse on the main TV to finish off the night. Everyone is always cracking up and it always turns into one of those, "come on lets do one more round" kind of games.

I have to give a lot of credit to these developers for the support they give their game too. The game was released in 2016 and here we are in 2024 as of the time I type this review and they released yet another free update! It seems like out of the blue at least once a year they release some new levels and or characters for free. They're just awesome.

I whole heartily recommend this game if you have friends and some controllers to play it locally, it really is a fun experience that takes me back to when I was a kid sitting on the floor playing Nintendo games with friends. The game is fun as heck, you and your friends will laugh your butts off and have a great time and the Developers are awesome!

I have put 113 hours into this game, so it might come as a surprise that I give it a red thumbs down. If Steam went with an out of five stars rating I'd give it 2/5, but as the thumbs up/down system ask the simple "would you recommend" I'd have to answer truthfully "no".

The Good:

Underneath it all is a neat little game that plays like a table top board game with rogue like elements and a turn based combat system. You create a party with three characters and explore the land completing small dungeons, main dungeons, scourges, and random events. There's plenty to do and overall the game world hexagonal map portion is pretty good.

The Bad:

For the most part nearly all the negative reviews on Steam focus on the RNG (random number generation) eliminating any player agency, skill, or tactics. However I partially disagree, it's not so much the RNG, instead it is a combination of the combat system and enemy design both of which combine to make for an unpleasant experience.

In most Rogue likes or any game for that matter with RNG, the player can make decisions and utilize strategies to mitigate the RNG somewhat and create more favorable odds for themselves. However this isn't really the case in the combat in For The King as there are certain game design decisions which have nothing to do with RNG.

For example in combat the player's three characters are set up in, left, center, and right positions, as is the enemy. The vast majority of enemies in the game inflict "splash damage", which not only hits the targeted character but also causes some collateral damage to a character adjacent to them. Because of this your center rank character will be effected by nearly all attacks in the game since any splash attacks on your right and left character will also target your center rank, additionally nearly a third of all attacks are going to target your entire party since any attacks on the center will "splash" to both left and right simultaneously. Other than forcing the player to place his tank character as the center rank, there is very little a player can do about all the splash damage other than armor up your entire party as much as possible. There is a Taunt ability in the game but it's rarely advisable for your center tank to use it since the splash damage will then hit the entire party anyway.

The Ugly:

In addition to the majority of enemies having splash damage, there is a large number of enemies who do party wide debuff attacks, (poison, curses, burn, bleed, etc), worst the enemies do not follow the same rules for their abilities as the players. For a player character's attack's special effect to trigger, the player most roll a "perfect" attack roll, that is all his rolls must be successful, this is not the case for a lot of the whole party effect attacks used by the enemy, as long as they score a hit perfect roll or not the negative effect will trigger. Player effect attacks and/or splash damage in addition to requiring a perfect roll to trigger, also have lower to hit odds, which must be boosted using the focus mechanic to have a reasonable chance of triggering, which is a drawback the enemies do not have. They do not need to roll a perfect to trigger an effect and in addition they roll perfect an unreasonable amount of the time anyway.

As to the enemies near constant perfect rolls, most negative reviews blame this on the RNG, but I believe this is more do to the enemies stats. Whatever stat they use for their rolls is unknown or shown, but as player stats max out at 95 I have a theory that all enemy stats must be at 95. So the enemy AI's proclivity for prefect rolls isn't so much an issue of RNG, it's an issue of balance and poor game design.

This review is getting pretty lengthy so I'll begin to draw it to a close, as I could go on and on about poor game balance and decisions forever. The game can be fun and if offered for free or on a significant Steam sale I would recommend giving a it a glance, and if the negatives sound tolerable to you then give it a shot.

Underneath the poor combat implementation and frustrating balance choices is a game that could be a solid thumbs up recommendation. There are ways to create challenge and interesting game play choices without simply handicapping the players, giving all the enemies ridiculous stats, abilities and advantages, furthermore there is a point in which it's no longer an "advantage" but simply just B.S. (Bologna Slices).