Разработчик: Games Farm
Описание
Story
История берет свое начало в момент убийства четырех членов ордена Пента Нера, чьи души были поглощены стаей Пожирателей. С тех пор они скитаются по миру смертных как марионетки Пожирателей в поисках душ, словно воссоздав демоническое подобие Пента Неры.
Последний член ордена, ведомый жаждой мести, избрал единственный способ остановить их: он призвал Пожирателя, но иного – не ровню своим близнецам. Этот демон способен поглотить целый рой душ, однако пресыщение ими может очеловечить его или повредить его разум. В его руках силы, достаточные, чтобы уничтожить демоническую Пента Неру и спасти мир от нависшей угрозы или окончательно погрузить его в хаос...
Key Features Of Shadows: Heretic Kingdoms
- Свобода выбора во многих аспектах оказывает влияние на игровой процесс;
- Захватывающее повествование о мире, полном мифов и легендарных существ, сплетенных воедино нитями судеб;
- Два игровых мира в одном: перемещайтесь между двумя мирами, совершая рискованные вылазки в темный мир теней, где вас ждут враги и загадочные головоломки;
- Один темный герой и 15 различных персонажей: поглощайте души врагов, используя множество различных персонажей и стилей ведения боя;
- Разносторонние задания и бои с существами, которые пришли в этот мир из самых леденящих кровь кошмаров!
- Бессчетное множество фантастических существ: каждое ведет бой по-своему, и каждое заставит вас попотеть;
- Уникальная механика группы.
Поддерживаемые языки: english, german, polish, russian, french, spanish - spain
Системные требования
Windows
- ОС *: Windows XP/Vista/7/8; 64 bit
- Процессор: x86 processor, 2.5 GHz
- Оперативная память: 4 GB ОЗУ
- Видеокарта: nVidiaGeForce 260GTX or higher
- DirectX: версии 9.0a
- Место на диске: 5 GB
- ОС *: Windows 7 / Windows 8; 64 bit
- Процессор: x86 processor, 3 GHz +, quad core
- Оперативная память: 6 GB ОЗУ
- Видеокарта: nVidia GeForce 560GTX or higher
- DirectX: версии 9.0a
- Место на диске: 5 GB
Отзывы пользователей
Some developers do learn. The others, on the other hand, don't. And the guys from 3D People are nice example of that. Back in 2004 they've released an action role-playing game called KULT: Heretic Kingdoms (AKA Heretic Kingdoms: The Inquisition). The game was full of interesting ideas, but suffered from awful level design, confusing quests and poor story. Now, exactly ten years later, the guys (who ended up founding a new company somewhere on the way) released a sequel. And guess what? It suffers from the same exact problems.
Like KULT, Shadows lets us to switch between our regular world and some sort of parallel dimension (called “Shadow” here). Only, unlike KULT, there will be more than one character. Our main guy will be a demon called Devourer of Souls. He'll stay in Shadow, while in the real world we'll control his “puppets”. A characters whose souls he... well... devoured. You see? DEVOURER of Souls. YOU SEE? *sigh* Anyway, at the beginning of the game our guy will only have one puppet, but somewhere on the way he'll be able to get more. With different powers and skills. Some of those you'll need to progress the story, the rest will be optional. In other words, pretty neat concept. Especially since all of the puppets and even the Devourer himself share the same exact EXP and you won't need to grind much. Well, as long as you won't aim for achievements. Because, even though developers themselves claimed on forums that they didn't expect people to get beyond level 20 in this game, they've still added the achievement to get to the level 30. Because logic.
Anyway, like I've said, even though the game comes with a pretty neat concept (there's even some sort of hub, where you can change party members, which reminds me a little of Soulbdinger), it suffers from the same exact problems with KULT. And the first problem is... it's confusing as f**k. Even though the maps here are quite small and there aren't so many of them anyway (we'll return to it a bit later), the game just fails to properly explain even the most basic things to you and as the result, during some parts you'll feel seriously lost. Especially yes, exactly like in KULT, the journal here is an ass and won't help you at all. And the fact that the game is also heavily bugged doesn't help with all that at all. Trying to understand where to go and what puppet should interact with what NPC is one thing. But trying to guess which combination of graphical settings and party members will prevent the game from crashing? That's a totally different story. You can't deal with technical difficulties? You're not welcomed here. Crashes, memory leaks, game-breaking bugs and half-broken gamepad support. That's what this game is all about.
Talking about story, by the way. Just like KULT, Shadows keeps throwing some random names on you without giving you enough reasons to care. The story here is all about that. Names, names and even more names. Nothing really interesting to care about, no interesting plot twists, nothing fun. Like... at all. The funniest thing about the story of Shadows: Heretic Kingdoms is the fact that the game ends with one heck of cliffhanger. See, what we have here is not a proper release. Instead, it's the first episode from what was supposed to be an episodic RPG. You can clearly see why it never happened and developers started to work on remake instead, but still, you should keep in mind that there's no proper game here. Just a small (only a few maps to explore) introduction to something that you won't see without paying more.
In other words, Shadows is pretty much a smaller and way more bugged version of KULT. Which was a very arguable game even back in the days. Sure, Shadows looks kind of neat on screenshots. Mostly because of stolen design (it's kind of sad how every second wannabe developer tries to rip-off Blizzard), but still. Unfortunately, when you begin to actually play it, you begin to see it for what it is – short, bugged, confusing and, well, unfinished project with the same old problems all over again. Do you really need something like this in your life? Don't think so.
A sequel to Kult: Heretic Kingdoms . The game combines rich story + action RPG combat, though i wish there was a kind of introduction before starting the game, describing previous events so new players would understand what is going on.
this game contains only book 1 while Shadows: Awakening contains both Book 1 and Book 2, so you should skip Heretic Kingdoms and play Awakening right away.
Hint: when i bough Heretic Kingdoms i received Awakening for free (as part of previous promise of developers, i presume), so this is the way to go: buy Heretic Kingdoms, receive Awakening and enjoy the Awakening right away.
DO NOT PURCHASE THIS GAME! This game has a lot of potential. But, unfortunately, I just can't get past the horrible combat system. You basically "Click" on an enemy to target them (or try to), but there is no target circle, so you are just randomly clicking around the screen trying to target the moving enemies. You just end up running around in circles (because the same mouse button cotrols movement as well), and opening chests and breaking urns while you are getting slammed by eenemies. And there is no end to the amount of enemies, every step you take spawns enemies. I was bored and frustrated with the game before I even left the crypt (starting area). Add to this the extrememly long and annoying load times (you will be loading often), and the game is just unplayable. So, for combat to be such an important part of the game, 90%, and to have not spent time to try and develop a usable combat system, is just lazy. This game would have been a lot better if it was turn-based combat. SAVE YOUR MONEY!!!!
This game is another example of why review bombing exists. I purchased this on sale a while back so it's not as bad for me as it will be for others. You see this is titled Shadows: Heretic Kingdoms, not Shadows: Heretic Kingdoms part 1 or chapter 1 or book 1. You think you are purchasing a full game, but despite buying the game I got to a door in chapter 1 only to find "that's it until you buy part 2". In no way is a couple hours and 3 character levels of game worth 40 dollars. The best part is nothing in game or out of game tells you this is designed as intended and the developers and Steam said NOTHING in reponse to posts about it. It wasn't until other helpful people mentioned how they intended to sell the game that they finally chimed in.
Do not buy this. This is the most consumer unfriendly development team I've ever seen by virtue of the shadiest practices I've ever seen. Do not support them. Castigate them as much as possible. Bomb their games with negative reviews. These people had thier chance and proved to be abusive of the market and dishonest in business. If I weren't so busy I'd slam them with a lawsuit for this egregious display of fraud. As is I suggest we see them out the door of the games industry so as not to give larger developers any ideas.
The mixed rating on this game is not diserved anymore. When the game first came out it pretty much dumped a load on early access gamers. So unsurprisingly its ratings went to hell. It has fixed this, mainly by seperating with the company that was controling its purse strings so to speak. And then treating early access gamers better, but to be fair if you've moved on your not likely to take the time and now give the game a good rating.
That said though, i am not claming this is perfect. It suffers from rough edges i'd say. It can't seem to figure if it wants enemies to respawn. Loot drops can be pretty bad, which wouldn't be too bad but their is no late game town. They added a merchant which helps but it really isn't the same. Their are of course bugs, but nothing game breaking anymore. The game overall just seems to lack good planning later on, the final boss is fun but before that it feels amatuerish in design.
Regardless of that, the game is very unique in that you basically can shape shift and also move between two slightly different maps. Plus its a solid hack and slash game.
My only real grip with this game is it ends on a cliff hanger and their is no sequel in sight yet.
There's plenty wrong with this game - more than I feel like committing to a review right now. However, despite all the problems, the game itself would be worth a little bit of fun. IF IT WORKED PROPERLY.
I have ~30 hours in on this game as of this writing, and I've experienced every kind of bug you can possibly imagine: input bugs, freeze bugs, crash bugs, audio bugs, and much, much more. Just now, the game crashed during a loading screen when I tried to transition between maps.
I've pretty much given up at this point, as I'm convinced that development of this title never actaully completed. Maybe it got halfway through beta and then the devs just said, "Fuck it! This looks good enough. Ship it!" This game is essentially a bad Diablo clone, so for your money you're better off playing Diablo 3 or Torchlight.
As others have said, I had no idea either that this was part 1 of something unfinished. I'll be honest, I was really digging the game. It's not as deep as some or as polished as others, but it's unique in it's own way and at the end of the day I thought it was fun. There are many very polished and technically perfected games that I just couldn't get into. This one I did. That is until you finally get to the point where you are ready to come to the next major city and.......nope. You're done. What about all the.....nope...done. Or, you were supposed to get that....uh uh....done.
You'd think I'd put in a little more effort when it comes to researching the games I buy. Nope...done. I'll reccomend it for now with the disclaimer that I dont like any game released in episodes. IF you don't care, it's not too bad.
This game is beautifully made, voice overs are great, quests, loot, crafting. But what is at the heart of every game like this, combat. Now I will say, combat in itself is just as well done as the rest of the game. However, someone on the dev team needs to understand the importance of mob spawning and placement. For me this is where the game literally falls apart. there is almost no space to manuver in this game as it is, then add the mob spawn logic. Take two steps and mobs spawn in around you in a circle and attack, This is a game where tactics do not exist, its simplhy a matter of stepping forward, getting encircled with spiders, taking boat loads of un dodgeable damange and spamming pots, lots and lots of pots.
I find in annoying enough to stop playing even though the rest of the game is literallh a masterpiece. All I can ask is that as you redesign and update your game for the re-release, try to create a more fluid combat dance between the player and the mobs. Dont rely on cheap spawning tactics to create articfically difficulty.
There is also an abundency of console type boss fights, tiny little rooms, no where to move, lighting fast bosses that do tons of damage. There is no pacing to these events they are just pot swigging marathons, or as suggested in the loading tips, over level your character and go back to fight bosses.
Unfortunantely I will have to give this game a thumbs down. I am the owner of just about every top down Diable style game available on steams, literally dozens and there is somthing magical about a game when they can get mob spawning, combat fighting spaces, mob and player speeds, functional CC down riight. I just dont think this game has that criticall component. What a shame.
After some embittering issues with their publisher, Games Farm has re-acquired control of their IP - including their classic Kult: Heretic Kingdoms. Rewarding customers with more game instead of a paywall was how they decided to celebrate.
Any dev who puts their fans first will always be a winner to me.
NOTE: I'm still playing this game, and haven't finished the first book yet, I'll probably update this review as soon as I've finished my first playthrough of book 1.
Also, I'm trying to keep this as spoiler-free as possible, so some things may be worded quite vaguely. My apologies for that.
Shadows: Heretic Kingdoms is one of the most interesting games I've ever played. The gameplay is similar to that of Diablo 3, in that you have the same camera perspective and you basically spam your abilities to kill enemies. However, this game does it with a simple twist, the ability to move between two realms at will.
What this simple mechanic does, is that you actually need to think whenever you're fighting against a group of enemies, as some of them are exclusive to one of either realms. I thoroughly enjoyed battling a boss, and using this to my advantage.
The story of the game has been pretty good so far, and the characters that you control are quite interesting. The fact that your characters have their very own story adds a huge amount of replayability to the game which is really nice.
Despite all the good points though, some players may not enjoy the game that much due to the rather slow progression in stats and power, I haven't had any trouble with enemies on normal mode yet, but you don't feel very powerful either, since you'll die quickly if you stay within the range of your enemies' attacks. Do take note that I play a ranged character, it is possible that melee characters do not suffer from this issue.
I personally believe that the slow progression is kind of nice. It really is a great feeling when you finally level up, like you really accomplished something. And usually you do notice a change in power due to the scaling as you invest skill points into skills or passives.
Graphics-wise the game is absolutely gorgeous, particle effects in combat are not over the top and flow nicely. The environmental art within the game is great too. Alongside the music and narrative it really immerses yourself within the game.
One should most definitely buy this game if they enjoy a good story with a large amount of side-quests and simple, yet mechanically interesting combat.
TL;DR
If you would enjoy a game with a fair amount of exploration and story. Buy this.
OK from Scratch.. i had a real Love/hate thing going at the beginning.. it was somewhat confusing and the whole issue between the Devs and the Publisher and the ? regarding Book 2 ... Get to act 2 before you make any hastey reviews as i did.
Act 2 the game became really pretty amazing.. you worked out the wrinkles and confusion you get a few more puppets and that changes the entire play value.. if book 2 never comes book 1 alone is well worth the asking price imo.. a very attractive game sound/ graphics/mechanics all i would rate fairly high.. but the true fun comes once you have a selection of puppets to control.. it was a game changer for me.. i sincerely hope book 2 makes it to release it desreves to.
for 20 bucks i got a good deal
This game definetly resides in the Diablo 3 genre but is also very unique. So far I have beat this game with the merchant king and now I am working on the enchantress. this is obviously a beta version of the game but is well worth the money upfront. There are some minor improvements to the mechanics of the game but everything else is outstanding especially the graphics and effects especially for a non main stream or popular name like Blizzard.
Con's:
The mechanical issues I have quams with are as follows:
#1. When holding down your left mouse button to walk automatically if your mouse cursor by chance hits a destroyable object (which happens every friggen single time!!) will cause the character to pause and shoot or melee that target......this is a major "no, no"
#2. Spontaneous game crashes. Luckily every time the game crashed I had saved my progress at major points of the game before the incent but still cost me many wasted minutes. This is also a major "no no"!!!.
#3. Unlike games like diablo 3 when you press your button to attack a target then quickly press the button again to attack a different target in the middle of your attack and executes instantly to attack the other target after hitting the original target. This game has characters that execute 10x slower than the characters in Diablo so when you predetermine your target then change targets in the middle of your execution your character pauses and does not execute the original target then restarts the movement to attack the new target........This is super annoying for D3 players like myself but this setting is much more realistic so if you appreciate the realism vs the unrealistic stuff like D3 then this game is for you.
Pro's:
#1: The Price of the game is low for this quality of a game.
#2. The music & the character voices/material is great.
#3. The graphics are very detailed and realistic.
#4. The gameplay and story line is very unique in it's genre.
#5. This game has great potential.
If you expect this Game to be like Torchlight or Diablo 3, do not buy it.
Combat: It is somehow pretty buggy. You end up pretty often hitting nothing but Air, if you get swarmed by multiple Enemies at once. Also, it seems that quite often you just hang, and then you end up dying, because your Character decided to do nothing.
Running: While that System is nothing you should think its buggy, it is still buggy. Because you find yourself a few Times just getting stuck on Things .. and yes, you can even get stuck into NOTHING. Then you just cant move anymore, no back or forth.
Content: Here comes my biggest complain. The Steam Version of the Game is incomplete. When you finally end up killing the "End-Boss", you find yourself with a few unfinished Quests that lead into nothing. There are several locked Doors/Gates that you cant open. Missing Boss in the Steam Version. On the other Hand, if you have the Retail Version of this Game, all those Quests are doable, and you can open the Gates/Doors.
Crashes: You experience random and non-random Crashes all over the World. There are several Hotspots in the World, where the Game just crash, and it does this every time you get close to this Point. And the Random Crashes happen also, all the Time. So you can repeat or walk over the Map all over again, just to end up having another Crash.
As of now: Dont buy this Game, at least not on Steam, if you want the Full Experience of the Game.
Additional Information: For Achievement-Hunters - DO NOT BUY. Due to the Fact that the Game is not complete, many Achievements are not unlockable!
Warning: Stream edition is missing retail gameplay
I’m not talking about the game being release in two halves. There’s actually locked doors and three quests in part 1 that can only be opened in the retail edition. It’s not available on the steam version, even to earliest of the early adaptors like myself. And there's nothing in the game to tell you this, so expect to waste time backtracking because you don't know which bits you were supposed to come back to with your new shiny, and which bits were never meant for you at all.
Chapter 1 is great. There’s a good mixture of combat and plot. Chapters 2 & 3 and the other hand is just combat. The combat’s not bad, but that’s really all there is to Chapters 2 & 3 so if you looking for something other than grind, stay away.
I played through to the end, but wished I hadn’t bothered.
Pros:
- Excellent art design. Each level is both pretty and functional. The ability to switch to a ‘ghost world’ gets twice the millage out of each level without it feeling tired or forced.
- The ability to switch between characters is quite cool and well implemented. All characters receive XP whether they are in the party or not, so there’s no penalty for trying one out. The characters each have a distinct feel even though they all fall into one of three classes (ranged, magic, melee).
- Bosses are varied and feel special.
- In the configuration settings, you can change the ‘highlight loot/interactive area’ key from push-and-hold to toggle-on-and-off.
- Tom Baker voice over.
[b[Cons:[/b]
- There are no movement keys. It’s right click to move, left click to attack. This makes most combat stationary and a battle of health bars rather than something dynamic and exciting. There is some ability to kite by switching between ghost and meat characters (and you’ll be doing that a lot in chapter 3).
- Some of the later levels have you backtracking across multiple levels without fast travel no apparent reason.
- The game engine does not support multiple CPUs or GPUs (source: dev posting in the comments). My 4 core, GTX 970 SLI config could barely manage 40FPS on max settings.
Mob difficulty level is all over the place, typically at the start of a new chapter.
[*]Skill are unbalanced.
This game is amazingly well done. Excellent story line thus far, flexibility in how you approach things, and an innovative method of dealing with a "party" type situation without having a party following you. You are able to switch back and forth between playing a soul devourer and his many meat puppets. The game pay reminds me on some levels of the genius of the old game Soulbringer,in that you uncover things and sometimes need to accomplish objectives both on the mortal plane, and on the astral.
The environments are stunningly beuatiful, especially when playing using the DirectX 11 drivers. This is an amazingly well-done game. This is not your typical hack and slasher. Some moral grey areas throughout on potential situations. I have not played far enough through with multiple playthroughs to determine how this affects the overarching story or potential endings yet, but I cannot wait to keep on plugging away and explore those sorts of options. A very enjoyable game. Well-done.
Wow, great game! I'm only 8 hours in, but I've completed Chapter I, so I think I have a good taste of the game. There's just nothing about this game I can critize. The UI, the character inventory, the crafting, the voice acting, the graphics, the writing, game performance are all just great. I've experienced no bugs or glitches, at all. And, above all, the game is fun. The combat isn't revolutionary, or even evolutionary, but it works and it's fun in the way it's implemented. The difficulty on normal is reasonable. There's a nice strong story, too, which is tied to your character's backstory. This is just the game I've been looking for; all fun and no headaches.
I have played this game for four hours at this point and am unsure whether to give a thumbs up or a thumbs down. This may be a product of not playing the game enough but in most games I play, by 4 hours you usually know where the game is going.
So this is what I know so far and what I believe people will find useful if they are looking at buying this game. I bought this game because I wanted to try another arpg that marketed itself as being different from the usual model. This game does that. It is story driven and has characters that very much have their own flare and personalities. The voice acting is very good and the dialogue always feels important and interesting. However, I feel that even a story driven game should have fun and interesting combat, or at least cool combat animations. In this game I never found myself saying "Holy (explicative) that was awesome" or "This move is fricking amazing". Instead I found myself mumbling "ok, this a stun/aoe" and "Im not sure why I even picked up this second skill". I tried using both the archer and the barbarian and although the archer seemed a little bit more versatile, the abilities used still seemed lack luster. And maybe this was by design in an effort to make a more grounded game. But in my defense I bought a game where you play as a soul devouring demon who controls/ binds with souls of fallen heroes, and that just sounded a lot more awesome than it turned out to be combat wise. Im choosing to leave out anything dealing with bugs and technical issues because the developers do seem to care whether or not the game runs well and have taken the time to roll out a few updates. For that reason I wont judge the game based on how many times it crashes. But I will say this, when a game comes out of early access, beta, or whatever testing phases it uses and is marketed as a finished game, it should be finished. It shouldn't be released with known crashes or unfinished graphical features (like vsync). With that said the game is under 35 and should get a little slack for technical issues. For me personally it's the combat that kills this game. I plan on finishing the game after the crashes get fixed because I spent money on the game and because it does have a really interesting story line. But if I had known now what it plays like then I woulnt have spent more than $10 on it.
So in conclusion, if you dont care too much about combat or gameplay and mostly judge games based on story and concepts, then this is a game you will love. However if you are like me and want a visceral combat experience where you can feel progression at every skill point, then you will be underwhelmed by this game. As a general piece of advice, give this game another month or so to iron out tech issues. This will be a good game for some and a poor game for others, unfortunately for this reviewer it just wasn't up to snuff. The only reason I chose "No" is because I had to choose something and I wouldn't tell my friends that this is a must have. If you need a number this is a 60/100 and thats assuming tech issues get resolved. I hope this review was helpful(:
I had been jumping from game to game looking for something with an interesting story to follow that wasn't long winded as heck. This game is pretty interesting because you get to play as a demon and its 'puppet(s)'
When I first started playing I thought it was going to be just the demon and one character...then I found another puppet...I also went to the soul place and saw many soul diases.
Best Mechanic (Pre-10/30/2014 Patch): Collecting new puppets.
Worst Mechanic (Pre-10/30/2014 Patch): Loot, The RNG hates me...
PLEASE READ FULL REVIEW BEFORE JUST LOOKING AT MY RECOMMENDATION!
Honestly, from the little I've played of this so far, I'm thoroughly intrigued as to where the game will go. I can't say it's the most original feeling experience as it is basically a "Diablo clone" (as much as I hate to use that term), but it does enough of its own thing to warrant my time, I think. Besides, if you're going to go for a style of game play, you could do a whole hell of a lot worse than iterating on solid design to begin with.
PLEASE REMEMBER THIS IS AN EARLY ACCESS GAME! If you're wanting to try this game to see what it's about, maybe watch a YouTube video or something first as I can't recommend the game for $26.99 as is. That being said, if you're like me and are able to look past some major game flaws with an open mind while being a fan of the genre, this isn't the worst purchase on Steam.
As is, I would recommend having a decent rig for playing, since there are currently no options to "tune down" any of the graphic settings beside resolution to work well for lower end machines and even on my high-mid machine it chugs like a beast due to lack of optimization (that will surely come much later). I streamed my first impressions of the game and I feel like that was a mistake and may have made the game look much more choppy than it actually was, but I feel like the most I got at any point in time playing was 25-30fps. It isn't unplayable, but added to the sluggish movement feel and kinda janky item pickup, some parts felt more arduous than they will when I can tweak the settings to make sure I get my full 60fps minimum.
TL;DR Don't be silly and think you'll get an objectively "good" product right now for the price, but there is enough in here to show glimpses of a future solid title.
P.S. Shameless video play plug and to the devs, I'm sorry my streaming made the game look like it performs worse than it actually does :-(
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HblXseaXGzs
Overall, in just the short time I've had to play it, I would recommend this as a game. Yes, it is Early Acess (pre-alpha), combat feels a little slugish, same for picking up items, art work (for what ive seen) has been awesome, sound track has been engaging, need click+hold attacking. On the upside, switching between members is fun, seeing both the light/shadow sides and being able to level both seperate is a great thing to have. In its current state, I'd give it a 7/10, but I strongly believe it will only get better from here.
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Дополнительная информация
| Разработчик | Games Farm |
| Платформы | Windows |
| Ограничение возраста | Нет |
| Дата релиза | 17.01.2025 |
| Metacritic | 74 |
| Отзывы пользователей | 57% положительных (140) |