Ceci est une ancienne révision du document !
Website: https://www.urtuk.com/
Price: $17.99 USD GOG / STEAM
Blurb: “Urtuk is an open world, tactical turn-based RPG in a low-fantasy setting. Guide your band of adventurers through the ruins of an ancient world. Recruit new followers, loot the corpses of your fallen foes, and do your best to survive in this harsh and unforgiving realm.“
This game is finally out of early access, yay! Currently on a 10% discount.
The very first thing that jumps out at you when starting this game is the epic music. Have a listen here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kfgxPsnp7Fk
As you can see, there is not much to look at and the art is almost a darkest dungeon style (pardon my screen-shots as my 1366×768 display caused some banding). Transylvania / Barovia is what came to mind, and indeed, the developer is from Slovakia, steeped in Slavic myths.
There is a story here. You are Urtuk. You have been experimented on by an alchemist. You get rescued by your friend, but you have mutated. You need medicine, which is nigh on impossible to attain. Playing the game, I could not help but think of HoMM 3 (heroes of might and magic III). You have an overworld map to traverse, the combat is hex tiles. The difference here is that terrain plays a part. Where elevation is preferable to strike from (always take the high ground), as well as push enemies into spikes, for instance. Instead of a hero with an army, you just lay the army, a-la Tactics Ogre.
When they say it is a “survival rpg” the emphasis is on survival.
You start with picking your characters, or rather character classes as well as three items. Though some Character classes can equip the same stuff, they are unique. There is no dual classing or any mixing. You start with a party of three, and even if your rescuer survives, he stays behind to cover your escape. For the review I went with the default, though you can mix and match your party as you wish. The items you can choose seem to be randomized, and I did not RTM, I picked three that seemed useful.
Though you seek to be cured of your mutation, mutations seem to play a key role in the game. Mutation effects are triggered on critical hits, so it is ‘critical’ that you get those :) You seem to be limited to three mutations per character. The mutations seem to be level-based, or they, too, level up (I only got the game yesterday, but am enjoying the heck out of it). You have a choice of four levels to begin with, exploration, adventure, veteran, epic, and on top of that you get to choose if you would like ironman-mode too.
Starting the game, Urtuk’s spells did not seem to work on anyone but himself, and they were all negative to his health. By default he is a priest, but you may choose another class.
Because combat is turn-based and played on a hex grid, speed is important, as it determines when your turn is. As mentioned before, the battlefield is littered with ups and downs and traps, like spikes. Other than your first battleground, it looks like battlegrounds are procedurally generated, which is awesome for replayability. This allows the tactician in you to funnel enemies into tight spaces to negate their numbers, for instance. Though the maps are varied, you will come across similar ones, as there are lots of battles to be fought. Most times, your choices will be move, wait, attack, special 1, and maybe special 2.
This may get tedious later on, but, at the moment, the game is new and shiny. That may be the case with the battlefields too as there is a lot of detail, repeated quite a lot. This is mitigated by the mission type, I have not yet discovered them all, but I hope there are a lot. For instance you get to rescue some retreating soldiers early on, and you can take a village to produce a resource for you.
On top of all that there are “focussed” abilities, that sort of build up to use. Some of the mutations are dependent on focussed abilities, so you need to be aware of the combinations that you choose. The icons for these focussed abilities are bizarre, looking like organs from fantasy creatures. These are a bit confusing to the novice player.
The overworld map seems small and very lovingly detailed, but I have heard there are multiple maps to play on (I am still stuck on the first one). This is great news. Speaking of locations, some locations contain bosses and not all battles are focussed on defeating every other enemy, just so you know.
The story is paper-thin at best, and does not really develop into an epic tale. That would have made this game a superstar (yes, I am a bit of a story gamer, I admit it). The setting is what makes this game with its weird / different “magic-system” (if you will), and dark, almost Gothic, fantasy backgrounds. The pick-n-mix characters are also a breath of fresh air. The art is bordering on ugly, but somehow suits the game, down to the spider legs they all seem to walk on.
I can see the game getting repetitive very quickly. The lack of story development means you will get bogged down in the combat very quickly. The characters also seem a bit of a mish-mash without a reason to “gel” together. Maybe the game needs some lore or something, I am not sure what, to tie it together. Overall, the game is great fun, but there is something missing, I just can’t put my finger on.
I saw somewhere (press release maybe?) that the game is about 8 hours long. I will warn you to budget ten times that. You can definitely re-play. While I am not a turn-based game guru, this is more fun than Darkest Dungeon for me.
There is definitely fun to be had here, with interesting characters and world building. If you have $17.99 lying about, you could do worse than this game.
I ran this on my potato laptop to judge the intensity, but it ran quite happily on integrated Intel graphics, but I do suggest a better resolution than 1366 x 768 in windowed mode (there is a bit of loading time at the first start-up). I ran it windowed as the game refused to let me take screenshots in full-screen mode.