The developer Ronimo games launches on the market Withered, under the arm of the Devolver Digital label. There is no doubt that the return community interest has been won every time they glance at a certain development. With a more or less successful result, almost they always bring catchy proposals and different.
A “dungeon crawler” with a very attractive.
This time it’s the turn of Withered, a “dungeon crawler” with a classic flavor. This is, choose your favorite hero, kill all enemies and come back with the treasure, if you survive, of course. The game offers us individually designed dungeons by hand, and they surprise with their variety of designs and purposes. The characters move in a side scroll and are two-dimensional, despite the fact that the scenarios play a lot with depth. The sound section is also very well resolved, with music depending on the epicity of the subject, and custom sound effects and voices for each character and enemy.
The game, as the present times dictate, has a few layers of “rpg” under. On the one hand, each dungeon must be played with one character from each class, namely Warrior, Assassin and Sorcerer. What is attractive is that as we play and overcome objectives we will unlock more heroes
On the other hand, we will level up and the stats of each of them in a process that will take time and some dissatisfaction. He also can’t miss the essential “booty” left by enemies and scenarios, although this is rare and difficult to obtain. As usual in this genre, the higher the selected difficulty level, the better the rewards. In short, a very appealing premise for those of us who love a genre that the years don’t go through.
The shelter, the base of Blightbound
The start menu is A declaration of intentionsAs there is no main menu per se. Directly at the start of the game we appear in the shelter, and by pressing a few buttons we will be inside a dungeon slaughter enemies. As easy as selecting a hero, choosing to play online or with bots, and selecting the dungeon you chose.
From this base we can manage the group of heroes and the refuge itself. We will hire artisans, blacksmiths, mayors, traders …These have different well differentiated functions and we will all need them progress. They are also at our disposal a series of objectives called “goals”, a sort of campaign, so to speak.
When choosing the dungeon we have several options, depending on which ones we have unlocked and their difficulty, which is random in each game. In each of them we will be able to follow the history of the characters, complete different missions and objectives, there will even be events in the middle of the dungeons. So we have dungeons with heroes to unlock and loot, a touch of rpg, a touch of management … But if eIt couldn’t sound better and I love it, what could go wrong?
The dungeon crumbles under our feet
Withered is a title designed by and for multiplayer. We can play with bots, but their AI leaves a lot to be desired, so much who can destroy the missions you had advanced for not having acted correctly. For example, it is usual to find three switches on the ground to open the doors, that is, each hero climbs on one to open it. Well, several times they won’t be able to do it, so we won’t be able to keep moving, this among others of the same nature.
Well, we still have the online connection, don’t we? Prepare to suffer more than ten minutes of waiting in the matchmaking menu to find players. Despite the “crossplay”, it costs horrors to find players, and this is a serious problem. The rare times we manage to find companions, the game has been disconnected from the server sending progress to hell, with the resulting anger of the player.
In short, if we play solo with bots, our progress will be interrupted by the terrible AI of our colleagues. In online games, if we manage to enter one, our progress is truncated this time by connection failures on the server. The only way to enjoy the game in its current state without a problem it’s with local multiplayer on the same console. The game here fully shows its virtues, and like we said it’s fun, entertaining, varied and with a challenge point that keeps us addicted a good number of hours when everything is working properly.
Uncontrollable conclusions
It’s a shame that the experience of Withered to be weighed down by basic errors that prevent normal progression. As we have already mentioned, the premise of the game couldn’t be better, and there’s good character design and dungeons behind it, with a wide variety of objectives and bosses. There is also some really good work behind it in terms of the artistic and sound section. But the AI bot, the inability to maintain an online game under conditions and matchmaking issues, do the only way to currently enjoy the title is in your local multiplayer.
We understand that they are optimization problems for its console version, since the game has been in early access in its pc version for almost a year. The normal thing would be that this will be fixed with future patches and updatesWe will be attentive to comment on any news on this subject, with a possible revision of this analysis. If you want to read more analysis and keep up to date with all the news in the Xbox world, be sure to visit our website, Xbox Area.
Pro.
- Very good dungeon design
- Variety of characters and objectives
- The shelter
Vs.
- The terrible AI of bots
- Serious matchmaking failures
- Poor management of players’ time
About the Author
Madrileño and Carabanchel. Lover of cats, fantasy and science fiction. I find it hard not to play whatever is put in front of me.
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