Middara | First Impressions | slickerdrips

[@simoncaddick4857]

Exactly what I needed to understand the ‘feel’ of the game (rather than getting bogged down in rules explanations and mechanics) - you’ve communicated this far more effectively than many other videos, so thankyou!

[@slickerdrips]

Thanks Simon, glad I could help :)

[@yipyipyipi]

Really nice overview, glad to get some more insights into the game. I just backed the second KS!

[@bzero007]

Loved the Lost Odyssey call back, excellent deep story. Great review of this game as it really seems to fit my style.

[@slickerdrips]

Lost Odyssey is the last great Final Fantasy game :P I'd love to play it again one day, some of the Thousand Years of Dreams stories alone were heartbreaking

[@bzero007]

@@slickerdrips Agree last of good line of stories that drew you in, those mini stories were well done. Thanks to your description above i decided to back the game and am looking forward to it. thanks.

[@geonekos2238]

I appreciate the shout out to Lost Odyssey. Great game!

[@slickerdrips]

One of the best! Wish I could play it on my pc 🙂

[@timgrossman84]

If you mixed Descent and Gloomhaven and turned the theme and art into an anime style you get Middara.

[@benlauson555]

Roll to resolve blows, especially after a half hour narrative.

[@dirks9816]

You can put it this way but its a bit unfair. I found there to be a lot of tactics, mostly regarding your skills/equipment and positioning. Since monsters can do a lot of damage you have to be on your toes. Regarding the narrative, there are condensed notes on their website telling what happened in just a few sentences.

[@slickerdrips]

There's definitely more to it than just the dice, but at the end of the day if you roll misses all the time and the enemies roll high, you're gonna have a bad time - in Middara it's not annoyed me as it does in other games though. Maybe it's also the fact that the story carries on whether you won the scenario or not, and you're not punished for losing, you're just not rewarded as well as you would be for winning

[@clintjackson6613]

What happens if your character dies? Can you continue to play? Can you level your characters up and buy items between levels?

[@dirks9816]

The normal rule is that downed chars are out for the scenario. But many people dislike player elimination so there is an optional rule letting you respawn in the next round with half your hitpoionts. But you have to take a "time token" and if you have 4 of them the scenario is lost. Regarding leveling: After an adventure, which may be several scenarios long, you usually return to a place where you can level up and buy stuff.

[@stephenspackman5573]

Am I being unkind if I say that for a $500 game the quality of the reading is, well, not what I'd expect? For me, the low points in what otherwise seems like an interesting idea were the audiobook aspect and the fact that the combat system seems to be deliberately designed to be super swingy-the idea that a slightly above average roll AUTOMATICALLY brings with it buckets of bonus symbols (they're printed on the same dice), and then that leads to a chained attack-and that's not even with criticals, that's happening in the middle of the distribution. And the enemies are designed so that they're equally good at range or in melee, and their notion of a formation bonus is essentially being in the same room-which means that the promised tactical aspect seems compromised (though maybe that was just because this is a tutorial scenario?), which again means that it's the first roll of the dice that decides the encounter. Then again, you say that you've been having a whale of a time, so I guess that's not your experience over the longer run?

[@slickerdrips]

I think that’s a bit unfair, yeah. I think the first game is ~$120? It’s a free extra that’s done on top of the scenario book for if you don’t want to read it yourself. I mentioned in the first impressions, there are mistakes here and there in the reading but I think it’s great overall, we really enjoy how it’s read :) the dice system is always going to be swingy - it’s probably to add more of a sense of danger that even the smaller monsters can really hurt you. The idea with these monsters is to try and hit them at range if you can, or try not to let them group up, or use the dodge/defensive traits you have to make them miss their big melee attack which automatically stops any follow ups. There’s more stuff like flanking bonuses I didn’t get to in the video, but as tactical as you can be about it you’re still at the mercy of the dice in the end. Like I said, I usually hate the roll to resolve dungeon crawlers but we’ve absolutely loved this!

[@stephenspackman5573]

@@slickerdrips Yeah, I realise that if I hadn't listened to the audiobook I'd have felt better about the review overall, which, as you say, means that-given it's an extra-I should just ignore it, right? :) And I guess I see what you mean about the monsters-if the lesson you need to learn is not to even give them an opening…! I'm still a little puzzled by the design of the dice, with the irregular numberings and the correlated bonus symbols, but maybe if I sat down with a set of them and analysed all the faces it would make more sense. As to price-and fully understanding that, as you say, you're less than 10% of the way through the full arc, but at least you know more than I do-do you think someone would want to get just volume 1, and be satisfied with that? When I said ‘a $500 game’ I was imagining that it was all in or nothing, in the sense that if I got hooked I'd then be really frustrated if I hadn't picked up everything.

[@slickerdrips]

Yeah I could have read it out, but I like the narration so wanted to use it :) it's still a case of the higher numbers are better, they have more symbols, but you can choose amongst your items how to spend them. I'm in a much easier position to be satisfied because I did get sent the game, but for us I think we would have been very happy with the 20% of part 1 we've played so far, we haven't gotten into a game this much since Gloomhaven I think. It's tough because ideally I'd show you more of the story and scenarios, but there just isn't time - I think a few people are doing longer series though if you're interested in seeing more