Stranger Preview

[GameBanshee News]

GamingExcellence has put together a quick preview of Fireglow's Stranger, based on a near-final build of the RTS/RPG hybrid.

One of the more unique offerings of Stranger is the magical system. By killing enemies, you'll collect coloured gems, blue, green, and red. Each represents a different type of magic, for example, green represents healing and red represents battle magic. You give these resources to your units in combat, which will allow them to cast spells of that aura. By providing units with a larger number of gems, it allows them to cast more powerful spells. What is interesting however is by combining colours, you can produce cyan, yellow, or even white magic, the most powerful form found in the game. These combinations allow you to experiment with different types of magic, although each of the three main characters really emphasizes the use of one magical style. It should be noted that spells are cast automatically during combat, relative to the magical aura you have assigned to the character. As well, switching magic types on the fly is a bit cumbersome, thus and it makes more sense to do so in preparation for a battle. You'll definitely want to put a bit of time into setting up these auras prior to an attack.

As with any RPG-oriented game, you'll be focused on leveling up the main character. In Stranger, you can do this by leveling up one of any four skills, melee, ranged, craft, and magic. As you level, you'll be able to purchase feats that will augment a variety of abilities, such as making the character more proficient with a specific weapon, increasing their health, or giving them a wider variety of spells to cast. The way you go about leveling the character in Stranger isn’t highly used in other games, and may take a bit of getting used to for fans of the genre.