Sword of the Stars: The Pit – Review
Steam sales prove that indie games are getting more popular every day. Sword of the Stars: The Pit is one of them, more specific an “old-school strategy RPG” indie game. This game goes back to the time when “Continue?” didn’t exist yet and making even the smallest mistake resulting in a “Game over” in the face. Is there still place for such a game in the current game industry where every game turns out to be, let’s be honest, very easy and fast? That’s what we wanted to find out.
Story:
A deadly virus is currently spreading on the planet, turning everyone into ghouls. The last desperate hope is a rumor of an ancient alien facility, as known as “the pit”, hidden high in the Feldspar Mountains. Your goal is to explore the pit and find the cause of the deadly virus and even more important, find a cure. Many people tried to achieve this goal already, but never came back. You’ll have to do better to save the planet.
Graphics:
The old-school look of the game was a deliberate choice of Kerberos Productions, developer of the Sword of the Stars series and sends you back to “the good old times”. This look should give you a subtle hint that finishing this game won’t be easy…
During the game, there is a good variation of enemies and the later enemies even are a little surprising (what the f*ck, dinosaurs?!). Some more variation in the environment would have been welcome though. After playing a few hours and passing the same environment and objects over and over again, you’ll feel a little exhausted.
Sound:
The music in this game isn’t really worth to mention. If you don’t pay attention, you won’t even notice it. In other words, pretty boring. Sound effects are funny for a short while, especially the effects of the later enemies you’ll encounter, but the sound effects of weapons and opening lockers,fridges, etc… are a little lame.
The main theme song is mention worthy though. Once you turn on the game, it feels like turning on your good old NES!
Gameplay:
This game combines RPG with strategy, but in a painful hard way. When you start the game, you’ll need to select one of the three classes. Each class has different strengths, weaknesses and starting items. Do you want to start rambo-style or do you prefer the stealthy way? It’s your choice During the game you’ll be able to upgrade your skills every level up. There’s a lot of variety in these skills, so you can try out a lot of different setups during your playthroughs.
Your goal is simply to reach the 30th floor, but that sounds easier than it is. Every floor you’ll encounter a bunch of enemies, which you’ll fight in a turn-based battle system. Every playthrough is different, since every floor is randomly generated and you have no clue where the entrance to the next floor is. You’ll have to open lockers, healing stations and ammo kits to keep up your health and ammunition up, but also you’ll also have to open fridges to keep your belly filled. Almost every step you take, you’ll get more hungry, which makes you desperate to find healthy food. Lucky you’ll encounter some cuisines now and then to cook you some food. Unlucky you have no clue which items you have to use to craft a food item. The only way you can learn the recipes, is by trying them out, but if you fail to combine items for a valid recipe, you’ll lose all your precious items.
The game will even become harder by all it’s random events. There are random traps everywhere and even passing a door might give you a random status. This can turn out to be positive, but also deadly negative. You might, by example, start running faster, or you might get a nasty poison, draining away your health. And that’s just the start. You’ll find items which upgrade your weapons and armor, but you don’t know what status they’ll give. Only when you try them out, you’ll know which up- or downgrade the specific item adds to your gear.
All these random factors make the game insanely hard, which is cool for the fans, but even for them some factors make this game a little annoying. Disease by example is the most awful status in the game. When you receive it from traps, enemies or doors, it starts on level 1 (sometimes even on level 2). When you don’t use a healing pack soon, your disease level will increase. Once your disease reaches level 5, it’s game over. It will make you go insane, when you get the disease status for the 10th time, while you are running out of healing packs and getting so close to that 30th floor!
Conclusion:
When you enjoy some hard old-school games, you should give this game a try. 8 bit-graphics, a learn curve which you’ve only encountered in the 80’s, some funny sound effects, and about 100 attempts to finish the game. That’s what you can expect from this game. For regular players, this game will be a bit too annoying. Too many random deaths and the feeling like you’re losing in an unfair way will make you turn your back to this game pretty fast. You might want to try it “just one more time”, but will be demotivated by dying over and over by the random factors. Only players with balls of steel will keep trying to reach that 30th floor and find out about that deadly virus.
Related Items
1 Comment
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.
[…] Games is the first DLC for Sword of the Stars: The Pit. The Pit is a pretty decent game and 3rd Strike rated the game 6.8. The lack of variation made […]