The Dungeon Of Naheulbeuk: The Amulet Of Chaos
DrHappyAngry
Member Posts: 1,577
in Off-Topic
Has anyone else played this? This is the first game that Steam recommended to me that's actually good. The game's a goofy take on the fantasy tropes done in the turn based style. All the characters in the party are such tropes that they don't even have names, just things like The Ranger, The Elf and The Dwarf (just a regular Dwarf). The ogres powers are just hilarious, burping a cloud of noxious fumes out that stuns enemies or puking up a head to throw at enemies.
The combat's pretty brutal at times. I get my butt kicked at least as often as in the Divinity:OS games and it requires a lot of strategy. The adventurers are clearly not competent and you'll wind up with a lot of critical failures. There's an interesting mechanic with that though. Whenever you critical fail, a meter fills up a point. You can use stuff from that meter to get an extra action point, heal somebody, teleport the current party member to another spot or heal up to 6 party members.
The interface can be a little wonky outside of combat. It's pretty linear with a decent amount of side quests and doesn't have a lot of choice and consequences. It's rare that there's actually a choice in dialog, but it is all voice acted and the party banter's pretty funny. At one point you will get the choice whether to recruit an additional character into the party and can pick from a Bard, a Priestess or a Paladin.
The game's an homage to pretty much everything in the fantasy genre, from the Hobbit's riddle to a parody of Minsc and Boo named Binsc and Moo whose giant miniaturized space hamster you have to find.
I fought a Dark Elf metal band tonight
The Priestess' quest involves going to an orgy to get her cousin back and stop him from embarrassing the family. You have to buy masks first (they only sell wolf masks) and when you're entering she tells everyone "Be sure to keep your eyes wide shut." There's some dirtier humor in that scene too
Overall I'm having a pretty good time with it. Not sure how long it is, though.
The combat's pretty brutal at times. I get my butt kicked at least as often as in the Divinity:OS games and it requires a lot of strategy. The adventurers are clearly not competent and you'll wind up with a lot of critical failures. There's an interesting mechanic with that though. Whenever you critical fail, a meter fills up a point. You can use stuff from that meter to get an extra action point, heal somebody, teleport the current party member to another spot or heal up to 6 party members.
The interface can be a little wonky outside of combat. It's pretty linear with a decent amount of side quests and doesn't have a lot of choice and consequences. It's rare that there's actually a choice in dialog, but it is all voice acted and the party banter's pretty funny. At one point you will get the choice whether to recruit an additional character into the party and can pick from a Bard, a Priestess or a Paladin.
The game's an homage to pretty much everything in the fantasy genre, from the Hobbit's riddle to a parody of Minsc and Boo named Binsc and Moo whose giant miniaturized space hamster you have to find.
I fought a Dark Elf metal band tonight
The Priestess' quest involves going to an orgy to get her cousin back and stop him from embarrassing the family. You have to buy masks first (they only sell wolf masks) and when you're entering she tells everyone "Be sure to keep your eyes wide shut." There's some dirtier humor in that scene too
Overall I'm having a pretty good time with it. Not sure how long it is, though.
2
Comments
https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2020/10/01/the-dungeon-of-naheulbeuk-review/
I still haven't finished it, but have gotten a bit better idea of what's going on and better handle on the combat, so I'm getting my ass handed to me less. It's a really hammy and fun adventure from a small French studio.
One of the hilarious things about the game is it's supposed to be an unexplored dungeon, then you get to the second floor and there's a full on tavern and population living there. You keep asking about a dungeon master and everyone's like "Nope, this place is ruled by a co-op run committee." I love the fourth wall breaking stuff where the party actually talks with or insults the narrator or directly references XP. Sometimes they'll actually outright say "I didn't put points into that skill."
Still got a few more chapters left, but have been really enjoying it. It's estimated at around 40 hours, which seems pretty good for $35 game. Overall it's definitely worth it. It's been quite the surprising little gem that came at a time when I'm waiting for other games to come out and is actually quite good.
My one biggest gripe is that you can only detect traps if you've selected the thief and are moving super slow. You can spot trap type spots since they're normally near statues, but because of the janky out of combat UI and camera angles you can't always see them. At least the in combat UI's fine.
The game caps out at level 10, which definitely felt like enough so you can have lots of abilities, but keep it challenging. The AI's reasonably smart (at least on normal) and take advantage of the environment an AoE effects. There's plenty of fun crowd control abilities you can use too.
With combat, you have a move action and general action. You can sacrifice your general action for more movement, but not vice versa. I do kind of wish they had let you dump your move action for another general action, but I guess D&D went that route, too. One of the abilities from the fail meter is an extra point, though.