Strategic RPG 'For The King' is a game that constantly surprised me with some really great gameplay. Thanks to the developer, I had a chance to check out For The King a little while ago and I keep going back for another run because it's so good.
Here's the basic run-down of what it is:
For The King is a challenging blend of Strategy, JRPG Combat, and Roguelike elements. Each play through is made unique with procedural maps, quests, and events. Brave the relentless elements, fight the wicked creatures, sail the seas and delve into the dark underworld. None before you have returned from their journey. Will you be the one to put an end to the Chaos?
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I wrote about this game before, sure, but I never actually gave it any thoughts as I was waiting for a key to come in. I eventually livestreamed it two days in a row, because it completely sucked me in. It's surprisingly rare still for a game to do that to me! A lot of games are good, but not a lot make me seriously want to come back to them—For The King does. Frustrating due to the randomness of it at times, sure, but fun nonetheless.
It actually received a pretty big update only yesterday, so it's a pretty good excuse to mention it again.
This weeks big update for it added a new adventure to embark on that sees you go through a never-ending dungeon, with the chance to unlock unique lore items and special achievements. Not to end there, you will also find some new enemies to face like the chaos skull, acid blob, hellhound and more.
Along with that, they also now allow you to adjust some of the difficulty rules when starting a new game, something that should please a lot of players (as it can be pretty punishing). They also fixed a bunch of bugs.
You can get a copy from Humble Store or Steam. Currently the Linux version is not on GOG.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
Crazy Penguin Jun 22, 2018
Last edited by Crazy Penguin on 22 June 2018 at 5:50 am UTC
There are some BUTs though...
1) I play on Debian most of the time, and my main rig is Debian 10 Buster. Well, For The King (FTK) popped up a black screen and did nothing. Tsk! After reading Steam Forums and trying different things and getting nowhere, e.g. trying windowed mode ( -screen-fullscreen 0 ) and trying the command line: STEAM_RUNTIME_PREFER_HOST_LIBRARIES=0 steam (from here: FTK Steam Info )
Eventually, I went into the FTK Properties on Steam, and selected the 32 bit Beta, rather than the regular game, and the 32 Bit one loads up and works fine. I tend to feel this is probably the fault of Unity3D but I'm sure the devs could include some sort of hot-fix in their release.
EDIT: So, for me on Debian 10 I needed to do both of these things to get it to run:
(a) STEAM_RUNTIME_PREFER_HOST_LIBRARIES=0 steam # launch steam with this command-line
(b) Play the 32 bit version of the game (found in the Beta section of the game's Properties)
2) My 4 or so hours of game play. As you might already remember me mentioning - Love FTL, love Slay the Spire, love the design of Darkest Dungeon but it is just too punishing and unpleasant to actually play it. Well, For The King is too punishing and too random for my proper enjoyment. There should be an Easier Level setting below the "Apprentice" level, because Apprentice level is still much too hard.
The problem is that the game pushes you forwards, faster than you have time to recover (to heal your party, to stock up on potions, to search the surrounding area, to level up your party) and you either go too slow (and the world situation goes out of hand) or you try to keep up (doing the main story) and your party is too weak to take on the baddies.
Not happy with the balance and not happy with the game level adjustment. YMMV.
Last edited by g000h on 25 June 2018 at 9:54 pm UTC
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