izigame.me

(36h of Demo playtime)
Gather your heroes, Share the adventure*
*As long as everyone is the same group and playing at the same time.

TL;DR:
If Multiplayer is important to you, find another game.


In multiplayer your hero is stored on the host file !!! Which means you cannot play your ranger "HawkEye" from my game in any other game. In fact until I decide to host that particular game again, your don't have access to your hero. You can't even play it in single player!
You can't farm bosses, once killed they're permanently dead. You can farm trash mobs endlessly. (??)
more of a campaign RPG, as opposed to a hack'n'slash ARPG


Ok you're probably here for #1 so let's get 2 and 3 out of the way:

3. Even though it says ARPG, the best features of that (solid multiplayer, boss farming for epic loot) are not going to be in this game.
2. No repeating content - like most story-driven RPGs (but not HnS ARPGs) the content is cleared once campaign-style. (in other words it's not Diablo , Titan Quest, Torchlight, Last Epoch, PoE, Grim Dawn)
1. I know it sounds ridiculous, but this is not a troll post. (As a matter of fact the developers were the ones trolling see bottom of review). Devs really went ahead with this design decision. Citing that it was going to be too difficult to code separate hero progression in MP.
Instead of learning how to implement a core feature they decided to be lazy.
The long version of how Multiplayer works:
You, me and our friends John and Gabe buy the game and Gabe hosts.
We all join, start playing, everything is fun. But Gabe then wants to stop playing and do something else (writing Half-Life 3 fanfic).
So the game ends in act 1, after we killed the first boss.
Now it's 3 of us: You, me and John.
We can't play those characters. They're stored on Gabe's computer, in that particular game save.
We have 2 options: Start a new game, or wait for Gabe.
Ok this time John hosts, and same thing happens.
Now it's you and me. We wait for John, or Gabe, or start another game, with only ourselves.Do you see how awful this system is?
Believe it or not, it gets worse:
Gabe is online, because he's always online, but me and John are not.
Gabe messages you and says let's play some Hammerwatch2.
He loads the file with all 4 of us, but it's only the two of you now.
You guys kill bosses and find lots of items and gold without us.
When I am free I decide to join you. John is still away.
When I join your game which has progressed beyond the first boss, I have automatically been rushed to your position - with free level-ups (if I was level 5 last time, I'm now 15 to match you), but no items.
So in a nutshell, this is the worst design flaw I have ever come across in decades.
This game should not advertise itself as ARPG, as it has more the features of an Idler - because you get auto-rushed when you rejoin a game that has progressed without you, like an idler.
IF you want to play it Singleplayer, you can enjoy it. I wanted to buy it for the Multiplayer. I know - based on the silent majority - that this was a big deal to many others. And if I did not have this information and saw a new Hammerwatch game in the store, I WOULD NEVER GUESS this to be the case before the 2hr refund window closes.
== The below has no impact on the review but this happened and it's worth mentioning ==
But wait it gets worse:
This was raised as an issue on the forums and the devs stayed quiet. They were active but not responding.
Well that's not true entirely true, actually they posted under regular usernames. Solais .
When he was posting he didn't have the tag but today - on the day of the release he did. Oops? He's been working for Crackshell for years.
I suspect there was more than 1 dev posting there, but it doesn't matter.
If it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, it must be a duck.
They were clearly worried about their new game knowing that the short-cuts features, are going to be received negatively and that’s why we get this radio silence, followed by un-tagged developers posting.
Also note that the discussion was very civil until the trolls started defending the infallible team Crackshell. Every rude or passive-aggressive comment came from people defending the game. Read the thread, see for yourself.
Ultimately I don't think this attitude and behavior should be rewarded.