Epics of Hammerwatch
So Strictly Limited Games has dumped the rest of thir stock for the PS4 version of the game, which only consists of the remainder of special editions on Amazon and are only selling it for the standard edition cost $34.99. The Switch version is still on sale at Strictly Limited Games, both standard and special edition are $34.99 now. If you collect for Switch or PS4 I'd recommend picking it up, definitely worth it and the games are regularly on Ebay for around $45-$80 for just the standard edition copies of the game, I can see this one jumping in price at some point. It's worth it just if you play the games, just providing the cost of these games on Ebay if that matters.
So the collection includes two games. Hammerwatch, Heroes of Hammerwatch, and all DLC for both games. Hammerwatch I'd say is a 7/10 at most, really a 6.5/10 and this is with 5/10 being your average good game. The main campaign for the original Hammerwatch is good but tends to get a bit repetitive before you finish the game. The game allows you to hold the attack button for a turbo button auto attack which I really feels cheapens the experience. The game is essentially a modern day Gauntlet and even has hidden secret levels that are pretty much identical to Gauntlet levels, both the look and feel. The DLC to the original Hammerwatch though is a lot better than the main game. It uses the same character features and the same character upgrades, but it is far more fleshed out than the original game. You start in a desert town and there's an explorable world with dungeons. You can find ore pieces to upgrade parts of the town, these allow you to pay to increase different aspects of your characters, whether it's skills, etc. As you explore the areas, much like the main game, enemies od not respawn, so retreading old areas to find new paths won't have you defeating the same enemies repeatedly. This one I would say is 7/10 making the full game a 6.5/10 or 7/10 scaled up.
Heroes of Hammerwatch is the second game in the package and this game for the main campaign reuses all of the assets from the original game's main campaign as well as more of its own assets. The first DLC, Pyramid of Prophecy, reuses assets from the DLC, and then there's another DLC called The Moon Temple. All of this is included on consoles whether you buy it physical or not.
The biggest change in Heroes of Hammerwatch is that the game is no longer a preset story experience like the original game, but is instead procedural. Now, while it includes a lot of aspects of procedural design that I hate, based on the type of the game and how progression works, I think Heroes of Hammerwatch is an absolutely fantastic game. I really don't like the padding of these games and I'd honestly say that this is also true for Heroes of Hammerwatch which does have that same upgrade path padding that the procedural genre is known for. However, on Heroes of Hammerwatch it generally feels that you're making a lot of progression until you just hit that wall that you're banging your head on. Now, one tip that I'll provide is that you want to get the fountain upgrade as soon as possible and you can load that with as many negative effects as you can that aren't too much of an issue as this will increase the amount of gold and experience points to quickly level your characters up and to upgrade your character more quickly.
So basically how Heroes of Hammerwatch are the levels themselves are procedural instead of preset, ore is found throughout the runs to progressively build your town up, this allows you to upgrade the blacksmith to get higher levels of equipment, upgrade your skills to get higher levels of skills, add the tavern and church as well as upgrade to add drinks per run, each drink adds positive and negative effects, or add permanent blessings to your character which you can swap between.
In the Pyramid of Prophecy DLC which uses assets from the DLC from the original game as well as new assets, there's a wave based arena that lets you increase individual stats as well per difficulty level, and then there are blueprints for statues which allow further enhancements to your characters, as well as the Pyramid of Prophecy areas being added to run through.
The last area is the Moon Temple DLC, this area not only gives you the Moon Temple for additional areas to play through, but outside of the Moon Temple has a mercenary camp. This mercenary camp allows you to create a new character called a mercenary character with the primary stats and primary attack of any one of the nine classes, but allows you to use any of the passives or skills from any of the characters that have achieved level 20. So for example if you want the evasion passive from the thief class that has a 100% evasion towards the next hit with a three second cooldown that also increases evasion while also having the passive from the wizard that when you do get hit activates a mana barrier that guards the damage provided you have the available mana, and the knight's shield which blocks all incoming projectiles in an arc in front of the character. and those are your passives, maybe the gladiator's net, throwing daggers, and the knights spinning attacker. Just throwing skills randomly, but just an example. If you were going to play the character as a primary build you could even use active skills that are defensive and not even use any attack skills.
One last thing is that, despite using the characters and skills from the original game that for the most part functionally work the same, there have been changes made to the core gameplay design. So instead of attacks being based on how fast the player can swing the weapon or the games turbo button, everything is on a cooldown, including primary attacks, so you can hold the primary attack and it will attack at the same consistent speed per character. Different characters primary attacks work differently. On Heroes of Hammerwatch, the warlock class does not get stopped whenever he attacks, giving him full movement speed while he attacks unlike most of the other characters and the speed is one consistent rate, while the archer is slower while shooting areas and shoots fewer arrows while moving, but if you stop moving the archers fires twice as quickly. Just based on control and how the mechanics work, it's much improved over the original game.
So you get a preset version of the original Hammerwatch and all its DLC as well as Heroes of Hammerwatch which is pretty much and infinite run of procedural levels. I actually think Heroes of Hammerwatch is the better of the two and this is imo one of the best indies of all time despite not liking generally liking the procedural aspect of these games.
There is one big criticism on Heroes of Hammerwatch is that the multiplayer is online only. I know why that did it and that's what makes it worse, because on the original game it offered local co op, no reason it couldn't have been here. They did it to force sales of anyone who wants to play the game multiplayer with friends. I didn't say their reason was good, and they obviously haven't said this, but this is clearly the reason.
Here's a Youtube video for those interest, gives a run down of how to play.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E2sSWP0YjiU
https://www.amazon.com/Epics-Hammerw...2451278&sr=8-2
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