About This Game Explore the secrets of a mysterious fallen temple and put your Templar faith to the test in Dark Devotion, where no sacrifice is too great in praise of your God. Measure your devotion and your bravery by journeying into deepest darkness for answers to questions that will challenge your very existence.Dark Devotion features a richly detailed, immersive narrative that unfolds a sombre tale of your Templar religion’s irresistible calling. Every encounter challenges your fortitude, piety, and conviction as you move deeper into your cursed pilgrimage. Spanning four unique worlds, each with their own incredibly detailed environments, you’ll wield dozens of weapons in your quest to discover the Temple’s secret: all the while assailed by dark enemies and devious bosses whose core mission is to destroy your soul and damn you forever.Throughout Dark Devotion you’ll discover an array of weapons, armors, and relics with which to enhance your character. Each item has its own attributes and statistics, and is customizable with mystical runes. It is essential that you maximize your strengths and adapt your inventory to the enemy you’re facing. Choose wisely...Dark Devotion is a story of perseverance, dedication, and secrets. Every chest you open, every item you encounter holds another piece of the story: be it a letter, weapon, or clue, all will help you on your quest. Whether you find these secrets amongst the shadows or in the dead hand of another character ...well, that all depends.In the Temple, Faith is your only recourse against the heathen droves. Defeat them to collect Faith and unlock secret paths, special chests, and more. But remember to use your Faith sparingly. Nothing lasts forever.The Temple yearns to see you dead. Your survival depends on using the right item at the right time to heal your wounds or dispel a curse. Some of these items can be looted, others are scattered throughout the Temple in secret places. Employ them wisely… your life depends on it.The eye of your God is ever-watchful. Complete an act of bravery or skill, and your God might bless you. But the Temple is also rife with despair and sickness, ready to destroy those who lack courage and temperance. Learn quickly its ways, or suffer.Salvation is fleeting, so choose your route wisely. Every world in Dark Devotion offers several different paths. Each one is original, but all are interconnected, and the only commonality they share is that there is no turning back.Completing your quest requires shrewd interpretation of the secrets shrouded within the Temple. It’s easy to get lost, though this might bring you favor...depending on the secret you uncover. Perhaps the Temple will reveal a hidden altar where one’s story can be saved if one honors the Temple appropriately...or perhaps not.● Dynamic and heavy combat● Dozens of weapons, armor, and items for various fighting styles● Intricate system of blessings, curses, and illnesses● White-knuckle boss battles● Rich, complex storyline● Dark levels and brooding environments 6d5b4406ea Title: Dark DevotionGenre: Action, Adventure, Indie, RPGDeveloper:Hibernian WorkshopPublisher:The Arcade Crew, Maple Whispering LimitedRelease Date: 25 Apr, 2019 Dark Devotion Download With Crack Tedious: More Work than FunI've barely played it for an hour, but stripping me of ANY equipment and forcing me to return to the blacksmith after dying in a game where you die all the time has made it extremely monotonous before I've ever had a chance to get anywhere. Game requires too many points to upgrade anything, considering how much work it is to get any kills with the garbage equipment you have available in the early game.The game is going for soulslike gameplay apparently, where I'm going to be repeatedly dying and gradually getting stronger as I experience the game. But it feels far more like a roguelike. Everything in the game is constantly trying to murder me and traps and enemies are all over, in ways that feel far more like Dead Cells or Spelunky than the likes of Dark Souls. But it gives me the same layout each time.So I'm getting without giving me anything new to explore each time I venture in, making it feel more nad more boring every time I go back in to re-clear the exact same level as last time. So I'm getting the tedius repetition of a soulslike, with the aggravating difficulty of a roguelike, without the upsides of either to offset them. Nuts to this. Getting my money back.. This game is very, very good. It's hard but fair and as you progress and get better at fighting you enjoy it more and more. You improve your stats and gear through unlocks you find and "experience points" you gain, but really it is your own skill improving as you play that makes the biggest difference. The artwork, enemies and music is superb - really makes an awesome atmosphere. The lore is mysterious and epic, controls are responsive and fluent (on keyboard, I have not tried with a controller).I'd recommend it to anyone who likes these types of games - hard but fair and little to no hand-holding.. After playing it for long enough to beat every boss except the final boss i can say without a shadow of a doubt i \u2665\u2665\u2665\u2665ing hate the final boss.I had all good plans on giving this game a good score and saying thats its one of the most fun rogue like games i'v played in a while but \u2665\u2665\u2665\u2665 me does that final boss fight stink of shody \u2665\u2665\u2665\u2665ing lazy dev design and the fact his entire fight is based on RNG can mean half the fight he wont move and then the next fight he wont \u2665\u2665\u2665\u2665ing stop moving.I had collected quite a few stamina relics and i still ran out just dodging this\u2665\u2665\u2665\u2665\u2665\u2665\u2665moves like seriously how is it the bastard does a 1 hit combo then he does a 5 hit combo instantly after oh and dont get me start on when he decides to pull out two swords cause if you dodge to other side of him when he swings he will instantly spin round and hit you and even will hit you IF YOU ARE BEHIND HIM AFTER DODGING. It's also not fun having a teleporter out front of some bosses when there is actually no point seeing as some bosses require you to at least have semi ok items or consumables unless youre a \u2665\u2665\u2665\u2665ing dodging god looking at you The First One of RNG\u2665\u2665\u2665\u2665\u2665\u2665how is it bosses at the very end of game (Bar the final boss) can be a\u2665\u2665\u2665\u2665\u2665\u2665easy walk in park but some of the bosses near early stages can be such a\u2665\u2665\u2665\u2665\u2665\u2665Also seriously if your gonna make it so i have to visit black smith every single \u2665\u2665\u2665\u2665ing time i die least spawn at the\u2665\u2665\u2665\u2665\u2665\u2665or better yet JUST KEEP THE ITEMS I HAVE ON SO I DONT HAVE TO \u2665\u2665\u2665\u2665ING WASTE TIME GOING BACK TO HIM EVERY SINGLE TIME.Personally i don't give a flying \u2665\u2665\u2665\u2665 what the ending for this game is i beat everyone cept the final boss so i can sleep easy knowing my character is sitting there at the start of game eating\u2665\u2665\u2665\u2665\u2665\u2665. ++ Deterministic gameplay; if you mess up it's because you messed up.++ Start naked, arsenal grows as you gradually explore the dungeon. Great method of teaching you at the pace your skills allow.+ It really is Dark... Excellent use of light and darkness. Seriously, take a torch until you know where the death pits are.+ Story is presented from a unique often unused direction.+ Great Female Protagonist that doesn't need forced and fake empowerment.+ A surprisingly interesting world\/story.+ Weird combo of metroidvania and dead cells.+ 3 endings.- There's a learning curve and a progress curve and they don't sync up. You can out progress the need to learn if you are good at unusual builds and patient.- Did I mention it's really dark? Seriously take a torch or the deathpits are going to frustrate you and start learning to look down before a leap of faith.- True ending locked behind a very harsh challenge.. This game is very gud. Buy it if you like Salt and Sanctuary and Dead Cells. I played a lot of different metroidvania games and I really want to like this one, but controls are just unbearable. When you release a game in a genre that is set for a decade, you should either copypaste the existing control set from other games, or better make it cutomizable. Dying 5 times on a first monster just because i can get used to control scheme is no fun.. If I were to summarize Dark Devotion in one word, that word would be slow.The movement is slow, the progression is slow, the exploration is slow, the combat is slow (except for bosses).It is a surprising take on the Souls formula: where most Souls-likes and Souls-spawn try to make their games faster, this one makes the user play even more considerately and cautiously. This is being achieved through the implementaion of a few curious mechanics.1. Roguelike elementsUnlike in most Souls-likes and Souls-spawn you lose your equipment upon death Dead Cells-style. Is it painful? Yes. Is it gutting? No. Becasue as you travel around you amass a pool of weapons you can start with. Those weapons are generally poor, but wait till you start beating the bosses. Each of them drops a particularly powerful weapon which goes straight to your pool and allows you to use it upon resurrection. Hence: the player is greatly incentivized to challenge the bosses in order to upgrade his\\her arsenal. Plus, in the dungeons, you can find particularly good weapons that cannot be added to the pool but can help on this particular run. All stat upgrades and abilities remain in your posession permanently once you get them. So, progression is not thrown back to zero each time you die.2. Health Health system in this game is surprisingly simple and helps drive the Souls-like difficulty home. By default upon resurrection you have two health points plus two armor points. Each hit takes down one armor, and then, when the armor is gone, one hitpoint. Then it's back to the hub with you. But, once again, as you walk through the dungeons, you will find protection and trinkets that will increase your health and armor. All of this means that there's no numerical damage on the enemy side, you will always take one damage. That makes things easier in the way of assessing how deep up the creek you are and at the same time harder, because there are oh-so-few precious health and armor points.3. Buffs&debuffs Dark Devotion features a very complex system of blessings, curses and afflictions that give you powers or inconveniences of varying proportions (all the way up to immediate revival upon death or losing a hitpoint every 30 seconds). All of these feel very appropriate to the setting and have a chance to trigger in specific situations (say, having fallen from great height a few times makes you lose hitpoints upon falling or if you flee a room with enemies still pursuing you, you will get an "afraid" debuff because of it).The setting is nothing to write home about. The whole "devotion" and "faith" thing is presented only in gameplay, there's no deep philosophy behind it all, unfortunately. Although and idea of one huge temple open for exploration is engaging, it doesn't feel any different from most Souls-spawn projects.It's fine. And slow. And that's not a bad thing.PSHalfway through update:1. It is apparent that the more you play, the easier the game gets (more stuff in the starting equipment pool, better loot from harder enemies, you develop your go-to tactics).2. Boss design really shines: at least half of the bosses have some sort of a gimmick-mechanic, that requires some specific tactic for you to beat. Not to mention the fact that phases of the same boss differ drastically from one another.PPSFinal update:Having finished the game, I feel this snowballing I mentioned in the PS even more. The last three non-final bosses fell in a blink of an eye. The final one was no slouch, though: a great number of moves and a phlegmatic temper. Sadly, the story got no better. Sometimes I felt frustration: the last area tends to swarm you with enemies or combines them in ways you are not too well-equipped for in this game's combat. You just have to run away to separate them, land a hit or two, repeat until done. Reminds me of Dark Souls 2. [nostalgia intensifies] [no, it doesn't] [screw Dark Souls 2] [screw Dark Souls 2 DLCs particularly] [except for Crown of the Sunken King - its level design is awesome] As a rule, if devteams don't die of hunger after such pretty good but rough debuts, they blossom in their second projects. Let's hope we see one for Hibernian Workshop. I suggest you try Dark Devotion at least for the sake of that.. 2D Dark souls? Not really.The atmosphere sold the game to me. The graphics are nice, the premise is interesting and even the gameplay seem familiar at first. But the game fall short fast. As symbolized by the very first corridor of the starting dungeon where an instant death awaits unless you, one you cannot see unless you pan the camera down. This pattern repeats itself with the enemies and bosses, a problem that is aggravated by a fatal flaw ; This is a rogue like. You lose - all your equipments and items - yet you have checkpoints. This mean you can end up at the gate of the boss with no equipements at all. The solution? Start over from the start to have a chance.Regardless of memorization of the level and enemies pattern , this flaw makes the game feel cheap in its difficulty.This game is unfortunately a pass until the rogue elements are made optional.. I'm surprised, I was expecting to be giving this a recommendation, but with how it is currently I really just can't.The game plays something like a Dark Souls roguelike, with stamina management, weapon combos, general playstyle differences based on those weapons and management, and even a similar looking UI to Souls games. Along with that it has the tough-as-nails roguelike attitude with death causing a complete restart of the game and generally random events happening. However the world itself isn't random, every play through the dungeon is the same, with the same enemy spawns, rooms, and pathways, the only difference is what drops from enemies and boxes, and what buffs you seem to get.I'm not sure if it's just because I didn't get far enough but there seems to be a lot of mechanics, important ones that might save you, that just go completely unexplained. I'd be running through a room and suddenly I'd get a debuff. Why? I don't know, I wasn't hit, I didn't touch anything, I just suddenly get debuffed for no apparent reason.On the opposite end, sometimes I'd suddenly get buffed. Did I touch something? Was there a hidden mechanic? I have no idea, I just suddenly seem to get them.The ideas of the buffs and debuffs themselves seems overall extremely flawed and can make or break runs in a fairly unenjoyable manner. Some do almost nothing like [-0.5 stamina regen], it's unpleasant but extremely workable. While others are much more destructive like [-10% movement speed and stamina regen]. Others make sense but are still massively destructive to a run in what feels like an unfair manner, such as [Bleeding] which causes you to lose one HP per 30 seconds. It has a chance of being inflicted when you get hit from an attack. As far as I can tell, [Bleeding] is permanent. At least until it you (randomly) seem to get the [Immune to bleeding] buff, which stops it.The second biggest frustration is the controls. They make no sense whatsoever and unless I'm missing something, they cannot be changed for controller. To give an idea of how assbackwards the controls are, for Xbox controller:Swap Weapon is - ADodge is - B, LB1, RB1For some reason Pray (Activate certain things) has it's own button - YSmaller less important things that could be ignored for the most part if they didn't fight with the other stuff. Combos just don't seem to exist for the most part, save for some weapons. The immediate first room after the tutorial is absolutely unreasonable and you can literally die within the first few seconds, without even seeing an enemy. Once you pick up an item you can't look at it, but even if you read it beforehand the descriptions don't generally give a good idea of what some items do.Perhaps the problem is just that I suck, I'm not sure, but the game just in general seems unfair and preys on misunderstanding and ignorance of the mechanics rather than mistakes and not paying attention.. While I can somewhat see why some might take issue with this game, I would consider it a worthy addition to such 2D Soulslikes as Unworthy and Salt and Sanctuary. The combat is smooth and responsive, with dodge rolls happening the instant you push it, letting you get a bit of animation cancelling. The rogue-like element has actually grown on me, as well. It's sort of similar to just going back to Firelink Shrine, and since you can get a decent set of gear from the blacksmith after each return trip (read: death) I never feel like I've really lost anything important. Plus there are a bunch of things you pick up along the way that give permanent buffs like Runestones and the ability to equip blessings before you leave the shrine.With the solid gameplay comes a truly chilling atmosphere. For me the highlight is the sound design: echoing halls, the scrape of metal on stone, the subtle shambling of some unseen horror. Some enemies even have unique sounds as their weapon drags across the floor, giving you clues as to what's coming. It's really done marvelously well.You like Dark Souls? Try Dark Devotion.
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