I've been playing for five minutes and have just arrived at "Sky Haven". The whimsical and effervescent art-style and scoring seems patronizing and grating, whereas in games such as the Ocarina of Time there were still elements of darkness, danger, and mystery present from the beginning as opposed to only having happy cartoon enemies, overused dragon tropes, and music lacking any minor chords. The protagonists and setting were not well introduced, and indeed seem like Nintendo clones the player is expected to instantly identify with without any work on behalf of the game designers to establish the setting. If the creators ever go on to make a work more thematically complex then "gosh golly a cloud cave!" I may try it out, but I doubt that this is possible. I will refrain from giving this game a rating, but based on previous experiences with similar offerings Cloudstone seems very probably terrible.
Reloading the browser on my system a fourth time has made the game run even worse, severe animation lag, image retrieval failures, and even the entire background being replaced with a grey-black color gradient instead of important scenes. For its programming flaws and annoying mechanics often preventing the review of cards used by allies, etc. I will give this game a heroically bad score.
Beyond the grammatical errors there seems to be something seriously wrong with this game's flash engine capabilities. Using Firefox, Card hitboxes do not recognize a player selecting a card over most of its area, comic panels do not transition properly and often superimpose partially on previous story or dialogue panels (with incomplete text fragments), and card effects or sidebar avatars are often garbled or invisible!
I feel that while this game has some excellent visual and mechanical design aspects it does not really cater to those who are good at playing games. I hit the ceiling having only needed the gold from 18/40 achievements, and to then be forced to repeatedly rehash flight attempts simply to get the game to acknowledge things that the player has already done without any credit being awarded is incredibly frustrating and annoying. With 28 achievements now unlocked and a senseless maximum of three awarded per attempt I am quitting this game out of boredom having never seen the boss level at the end. Many of these achievements are deliberately crafted to require multiple unneeded flight attempts, and they overwhelmingly are not fun or challenging.
I thought that the art, story, and music were wonderful or this game
In my first attempt I beat the game in 2 days and 20 hours:
1. Maximize upgrade speed and gold with a few reload and accuracy upgrades as well if needed
2. Buy uzi and complete all offensive upgrades
3. Maximize tree-speed upgrades
4. Begin growing tree at max speed while saving all money
5. Use $ from fighting boss level to buy minigun
I don't know how many times I have lost a battle, letting a single enemy slip through, simply because it is impossible to select land squares hidden behind already-existent buildings at a critical moment. I have grown so disheartened at the prospect of endlessly repeating battles because of this design error that I am not going to play anymore.
You know, in ancient arenas they used to release wild animals onto the grounds if the fights went on too long, here players are stuck watching a series of Thraex fail to bash through the helmet of the final Murmllo on a team for almost an hour! BLOCKMISSDODGEMISSBLOCKMISSDODGEDODGE. I am bored with this even playing two other games simultaneously. With the money spent to develop this you could have bought the rights to an entire franchise in the gladiator genre of flash games like "Swords and Sandals", which has better flow and a shop interface without small, bland, generic, unhelpful, navigation icons. Your slow, unskippable attack animations look and pace nothing like real-life combat, and the plot includes such bizarre naming conventions as the championship match with "The Cerebrus Hooligans". Less than epic.
It would be nice if the player could cast spells or perform actions during battles instead of simply sitting and watching the armies fight, it would be nice if the "cancel" option during purifications and baptisms mentioned that cancelling does not return one's diamonds, because in the mind of many "cancel" means a full reversal with funds returned (and one could unthinkingly spend all of ones diamonds by accident), it would be nice if the army actions did not gain additional time over five minute waits, it would be nice if during the time trials that the text screens and item pick-ups would stop the ten minute timer so that the player could actually read what was going on. With my armies immovable and all possible actions performed without a 30 minute wait I have decided to quit this game after playing for several hours straight. Best of luck.
After playing the first 60 missions I have to say this game is incredibly repetitive, travel to point X (identical to every other region often with the same structures), kill 1-5 "pods" with terrible combat AI amongst a field of other ships in your way, travel back to origin point, repeat infinitely. The only intellectual challenge this game offers is to figure out why the developers felt the need to create an "activation" ability for medicine delivery instead of simple docking.
Terrible path logic coupled with strategic defense requirements combine for a terrible and frustrating experience, which is sad because the theme and story are great.
I almost quit before trying the "menu" button on the cellphone, usually menu buttons bring up sound and quality controls for the game, you may want to label that "store" or "apps" instead so players don't continue to play without upgrades not knowing that they can make improvements.
Oh man, it sure is fun sitting here for an hour watching ore slowly gather over and over doing nothing so that I can upgrade my buildings to level two to fight Arion the pirate leader (even though I have a large fleet ready)! Your arbitrary progression caps anger me, and not being given a choice of first hero is also quite annoying, "Star Supremacy" has nearly the exact same plot, but at least offered building and colony development options and upfront information on race and class differences. 1 star.
Playing this game for the first time I can see why it has been abandoned, Most the functionality is locked behind blatant paywalls! Who thought that cultivating vegetables to make pie recipes like a Farmville junkie would fit in with a Steampunk adventure world? I would be curious to know if anyone non-related to the developers ever donated the $100 dollars necessary to become a lifetime member... I will rate this with 3 stars for the interesting creature designs I have seen so far and the character customizer and occasionally memorable map design doodads, and -2 for the lack of plot background, character background, flavorless NPCs, lack of humor, lack of good external references to other Steampunk works, too many material combinators, and too much pushing t get subscriptions
Yes my little red children, take back what rightfully belongs to the proletariat! OUR CRIES PARALYZE THE BOURGEOISIES, ONLY STANDING TOGETHER CAN WE ACHIEVE TOTAL VICTORY OVER DIALECTIC EXPLOITATION! MEET YOUR QUOTA WITH ULTIMATE BRAVERY!
If the developers really want to cash in they consider a profit model like League of Legends instead of energy systems and irrelevant grind-dynamics. This is still better than Tyrant, but that isn't saying much. Best of luck.
I can appreciate how difficult it is to create a game like this, and I give the designers credit for trying to pull something together of such ambitious scope, that being said I found the character creator incredibly disappointing and limited (only blond hair for men?), the ability point system banal (I have reached level six and have not been afforded a single choice in which deck statistics I can improve thanks to level caps), the plot formulaic and hole-ridden (who are these people traveling with me?), and the lack of in-battle sound effects or animations anti-climatic and boring, and I would critic the gear system but I haven't found a single usable piece for pyromancers and must assume that upgrades will be slowly spoon-fed to the characters in the quest like the abilities, featuring no real decisions at all!
A good deal of the games complexity comes into play as you acquire more cards and learn their mechanics and how to combine them together in the most effective manner. As for gear, you may find this thread helpful: http://www.clashofthedragons.com/forum/showthread.php?2457-Updated-Equipment-Location-Thread we really do appreciate community feedback, thank you for taking the time to leave us yours. =)
I have been watching the same piece rock back and forth balanced on top of a ball on level five for ten minutes of "deep breath" now... bad level parameter programming is more disappointing than relaxing...
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A good deal of the games complexity comes into play as you acquire more cards and learn their mechanics and how to combine them together in the most effective manner. As for gear, you may find this thread helpful: http://www.clashofthedragons.com/forum/showthread.php?2457-Updated-Equipment-Location-Thread we really do appreciate community feedback, thank you for taking the time to leave us yours. =)