I've recently been replaying flash games from my childhood and played the original 2 Murloc RPG's. Googling something about the game led me to stumbling on a Youtube video about this reforged project and knew I had to give it a go. I've finished the game now (all apart from Onyxia). I enjoyed the mix of nostalgia with the excitement of the new additions and was surprised at how much has been added.
My feedback for version 3.0.5
- Like many others have mentioned, the hit/crit chance doesn't feel good. Due to the difficulty of many fights missing or getting crit even a single time results in death. For a game where ability rotation and smart usage is necessary (like timing shield bash during the one turn when pummel is on CD but the effect has worn off) it takes away from the strategic gameplay aspect.
- Difficulty felt like jumps rather than linear. Mobs in Duskwood and Westfall seemed to be of similar difficulty with Westfall being easier only due to Mortal Strike not actually reducing healing of the lifesteal mobs in the zone like the tooltip says.
- The Quilboar gauntlet was incredibly frustrating having 3/4 stacks of their poison dealing 300 damage without a way to cleanse it. Initially I thought the pink dust sold in Duskwood could have been used as a combat cleanse due to the text saying it 'cured ailments'. Perhaps a vendor at the Mulgore murloc camp could sell a poison cure item to reflect their experience fighting the Quilboar?
- Some bosses were incredibly easy while some were incredibly difficult. Early on Rhak'zor took a couple of attempts whereas I beat Sneed and Edwin Van Cleef first attempt despite them being further in the 'dungeon'. Sunken Temple bosses were surprisingly easy, beating them all first attempt apart from Avatar. With Avatar, I never even realised the snakes dropped curse removal items and just brute forced it by timing shiled wall with stuns on my second attempt. Similarly in Zul'Gurub, bosses were either first attempt kills including both final bosses of the Red Rouge main antagonist, and Hakkar since I had picked up a couple corrupted blood items from the Serpents and had knowledge of the WoW fight. However, the Black Panther Boss (Arlokk?) took a lot of tries but was actually very enjoyable figuring out how her stun mechanic worked.
- Killing the Goblin for Felva's quest with the nut-cake was nice but I don't believe there was any indication that he had a nut allergy (unless I missed it)? The only reason I guessed was because I had been carrying around the nut cake all game waiting for a moment which seemed like it could be useful.
- Conditions in combat need a tooltip when moused over and a turn timer to see how much longer you're affected.
- There's an area after Edwin Van Cleef where nothing is. Maybe there's suppose to be a teleporter there similar to in Sunken Temple?
- The Green Dragon outside Sunken Temple needs dialogue. I never reached the Green Dragon before doing the Whelp kill quest which gives you the disguise to enter Broken Temple. It was only after reading others comments that I realised the dragon is suppose to have dialogue before you finish that quest, but since I had done it before seeing the dragon he had no dialogue leaving me guessing that he must have been the guardian the disguie is used for.
- Grammar and spelling in some dialogue needs fixing
Items
- Item stats didn't feel impactful: I couldn't really feel a difference when increasing my strength or armour. The only stat which I could see a direct difference from was stamina and weapon dmg upgrades.
- Itemisation was a bit strange on the whole. Even when progressing to zones later in the game mobs would drop mostly non-upgrades. I was excitedly hoping for Mr. Smite's Hammer in the Deadmines zone to sadly see him missing. Similarly, (when intelligence classes are added) I would be disappointed to not get the Emberstone Staff since Captain Greenskin is also not in the game.
- Despite Raider being the only class available, I enjoyed seeing items being dropped with stats tailored toward the other classes as it shows a good intention to add the other classes. My only criticism would be that since you choose your class at the start of the game, these items are redundant. Maybe make item drops unique for the class you're playing in that playthrough?
Abilities/Skills/Spells
-Overpower wasn't available for use all the time despite the tooltip not indicating any prerequisite for use
- Attack Power didn't feel like it did anything making abilities like Battle Shout and Thunderclap essentially useless (very rarely used them outside of testing if they worked)
- Other than that those, I used pretty much all my skills which is a big improvement from the original flash games in which I would just polymorph-pyroblast spam.
- Due to the difficulty, skills like Recklessness were hard to use. Most turns you're forced to use defensive skills like Shield Block, Shield Wall, and Last Stand, or stunning with Shield Bash and Shield Slam waiting for defensives to come off CD since without a defensive skill active the more challenging fights could kill you in 2 - 4 attacks. I saw another comment suggest having some abilites not require a turn (similar to Cold Blood in the flash games) which I thought was a good idea. Spending pretty much entire fights just using defensive abilites is quite frustrating and is a reflection of the difficulty of the entire game.
- Breaking abilites into 2 skill tress feels redundant when you're going to unlock all the skills at some point anyway and you need all the abilites from both skill tress to progress anyway. Maybe having Classes be specialised into one of the two skill trees (given a rework) could help change up play styles and replayability.
Bugs
- The middle Dwarf in Westfall started using Spirit Healer dialouge after I had finished his quests.
- Sometimes the starting Murloc camp would become repopulated with Murlocs as if the attack had never happened (I believe usually when teleporting back from Mulgore/STV).
- Weird bug when engaging Onyxia with Charge resulted in combat turns breaking and Murk repeating the charge animation over and over. This only occured once when Onyxia had spawned twice due to leaving and re-entering her area.
- Sometimes Deep Wounds bleed wouldn't get applied on crits.
- Rend wouldn't crit even when using Recklessness. (Idk if damage did increase, but it wouldn't say "critical" next to the damage number)
- Sometimes enemies would reach zero hp from a bleed effect and not die.
- Mortal Strike doesn't reduce heaing making the death hounds in Duskwood mildly frustrating (at their level), and the Druid and Paladin in the arena almost impossible without good rng.
- Upon loading the maximum rage was reduced. Went down from around 156 to 112, but after playing for a bit it fixed itself seemingly and went back up.