Occidental Heroes 12+

So glad to see this game is still being worked on, I find myself coming back to it all the time.

As an old-school D&D nerd, I thought I’d appreciate the Gygaxian element of “perma-death.” Turns out, it really sucks. I build up this awesome party, but I never get more than an hour into it before some stupid random encounter TPK’s me and I have to start over from the beginning.

And I’m really getting tired of playing the same levels over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over to get there …

Now if they lost the perma-death … and if they rejiggered the map movement so it wasn’t one single hex at a time (that part’s mildly annoying on the world map; it’s a downright tactical nightmare at the combat level, where each character can ONLY move one single hex — and they also MUST move one single hex, they can’t hold action until they hit a certain level) …

If they lost the perma-death and fixed the map movement, this game would be an EASY 5 out of 5. Maybe even a 6.

The style is awesome. The look and feel, and all the classic old-school warm fuzzies it give me are awesome. I love the 8-bit!

The STORYTELLING and the CHARACTERIZATION in all the PC templates and the NPC side jobs, believe it or not, are really engaging and a lot of fun to read — feels like there’s actually a world unfolding here!

The economy mechanics of exploring the map, picking side jobs, earning loot, upgrading weapons … all very intuitive, easy to play, and yet still very diverse. And they did make the right call going with hexes, not a square grid.

The game’s got a lot of great things going for it!

But that damn perma-death and the one-hex-at-a-time combat movement …

It just kills it. :(

Lots of fun, would be a lot more fun if perma death was a feature that could be turned on or off. Makes it more fun and accessible for casual players.