Krater: Shadows Over Solstide Reviews

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Written by WorstUsernameEver on June 25th, 2012

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Krater promises you a juicy carrot and then clobbers you with the big stick. Without that addictive sense of another reward waiting around the next corner to keep you pushing along, the gameplay loses steam rather quickly. Punishing players for staying the course through lengthy grind sessions seems counterintuitive when the idea is to generally keep people playing. The issues with this first installment don't bode well for the planned trilogy, which is a shame, since the underlying concept and personality found in Krater are strong. But not strong enough to carry the dead weight of some seriously mind-boggling design choices.

Krater could be a great game, but the lack of resources makes its initial version hard to love. Combat is a mixed experience and there are still quite lot of things that need to be polished, like the squad mechanics, and plenty of things that are missing, like a tactical pause.

Many updates are scheduled to appear but, at least for now, you might want to steer clear of the dungeon crawler.

With all this in mind - and especially with Diablo 3 still very much dominating the action-RPG market - it's tempting to just dismiss Krater out of hand. Polish is what's generally asserted to make games like this so good after all, so if that's where Krater falls down then it must really fall down hard, right?

Wrong. There's no doubt that Diablo 3 offers a more honed experience for those who like their games their games to emulate Skinner Boxes, but that doesn't mean that Krater is immediately broken by comparison. It's still a solid-enough action-RPG and one which, for the price, offers a decent amount of time-sink; it's just not on par with the household names which dominate the genre.

Put it this way: Krater isn't anywhere close to being as good as Diablo or Titan Quest, but it's still way, way better than Space Siege.

If the gameplay itself were solid, robust, and strategic like the one seen in Dawn of War II then this design choice could be overlooked or even make sense in the grand scheme of things. Unfortunately the gameplay is riddled with weird and detrimental quirks, like your ranged characters standing right next to your melee characters (making them easy fodder for foes) with no way to change their formation, maps that get confusing when you change the rotation of your viewpoint, clicking on obvious targets not registering as you hit the wrong pixel - all wrapped up in a difficulty curve that forces grinding the same boring maps over and over.

This is a shame because Krater features a great visual style and setting, plenty of content for such a budget-conscious price-point, and even a sometimes-exceptional soundtrack that conjures up feelings of Blade Runner meets Mass Effect. Perhaps a lot of the issues with the game could be fixed with patches and expansions, like the planned co-op implementation that is coming, as the core foundation and concept is still enticing. But in its current state Krater is a disappointment, and due to its indie pedigree, even more so than the latest Terrorists are Bad Guys, So Let's Shoot Them 7: Modern Edition.

Krater is a beautiful, clever, and quirky game that will find its audience, but a few of its flaws will be a permanent hindrance to a good number of players. Considering its bargain price tag and the amount of genuine fun it delivered to us, we can definitely say that if you're still curious, it's worth trying.

For fifteen dollars, you get a well-made dungeon crawler that fans of Dawn of War and Diablo will completely eat up. The game has a lot of charm in the character design and an in-depth take on crafting and character customization. With online co-op on the way, the inexpensive price tag makes the game a complete steal. I highly recommend Krater.

And yet despite all that... it's likable. It doesn't deserve to be, but there's something about its tongue in cheek spirit, the smoothness of its combat and the ease of its grind that makes it at least tolerable enough to finish -- if not look forward to the next chapter. In another year, it could even have been an entertaining reminder of why hacking and slashing is fun. Faced with the choice between it and two high-profile champions of the genre though, there's absolutely no reason to head here for your next hit of leveling and looting.

As I said at the beginning, I am not unsympathetic to what Fatshark are doing here. They are trying to make an ARPG that both hits the critical beat of dungeon-crawling and loot churning, with some deep and valuable crafting, but at the same time delivers a different kind of world, and a different kind of character management micro-game. I get all that, but I can't say that it works or, consequently, really recommend it.

Finally, I should make this last point: I've avoided comparing this game to Diablo III, because I don't really think the game is comparable. They are from a similar region of the genre map, but they are cousins from quite different backgrounds, and with utterly different goals. That said, the intensity of the combat experience in Diablo III is what makes it sing. It's what makes any game like this memorable and fun. The fireworks, and the variety of things you hit, it adds up to a symphony of loot-hoovering bludgeoneering. Krater, by contrast, feels quite downbeat. A well-meaning garage band playing in the music hall intended for a full-scale orchestra. And the dissonance is notable.

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