Lords of Xulima - You Missed Your Attack

What is Lords of Xulima? I had no clue when I saw this name. There was no review sites talking about it, no one on any major forums knew what it was but apparently there were some random people praising this game. What better game to try than some nameless game that some random people tell you to. First of all I want to mention that this game is very old school. Like Might and Magic X Legacy level of old, and you know how much I hated that game. So what makes this different? For starters, its not fucking boring, and there is an actual story to the game.

When you first start the game you are brought into the character creation screen where you have to make 5 additional party members to your main character, Gaulen the Explorer, a unique class. You can choose their portraits, name them, pick a god and then that is about all you can do. There are 9 classes you can choose from and you can pick the same class if you like. You can have a team of 5 mages no one is going to stop you but you won't get very far. Your party has a formation. There are 8 slots in the party screen, 4 in the front row, and 4 in the back row. You cannot place a member in the back row if there is no one in the front row. Melee attacks cannot be used in the back row unless they are using a polearm. Melee classes are naturally more durable so you are going to put them in the front rows anyways. The usual teams are 3 melee and 3 in the back, or 4 melee and 2 in the back. After you have all this done its time to start playing the game.

When you enter the game you listen to some text on the screen. I want to point out this is probably the worst voice acting I have ever heard. Worse than Persona 3's robot voice acting. I know this is an indie game and they probably don't have the funds for professional voice acting but I can still criticize it. Its so awkward that you can't even follow the story. When you finally finish the back story you start off at a beach where you ship capsized on. Its a top down game and you move by clicking your mouse on the location and your character will walk towards it. The biggest issue about this is that there are two speeds in this game. SLOW AS FUCK or FAST AS SHIT. When I first started I didn't know you had a "run" toggle. I limped around at a snail's pace until I realized you can press the Alt key to toggle run. Running makes you go faster, but drains your food faster so there's no difference between walking or running. Just hit the fucking Alt key and play the game. However, there is a problem. If you're running you usually can't see whats ahead of you in your vision. There is a fog where everything is blacked out except  the vision near your party. So you could be running around and suddenly stumble into a pack of high level monsters. You fucked up. Now restart the game.

Before we get into monsters and combat and such lets focus on the world map first. You have a food meter. This is reduced by walking/running around the world map as well as camping. You can camp anytime as long as you are not near hostiles. You may rest for 4 hours which will clear most wounds, 8 hours which will clear fatal wounds, or rest until full. Get used to this screen because you'll be clicking the camp button after every single battle. EVERY SINGLE BATTLE. Food can be gathered from bushes or trees on the world or bought at the Food NPC. Food is cheap but you'll be going back to town very often to restock because of camping in the wild. Enemies show up in two ways. In dangerous areas they will randomly attack you. But usually you can see the monster on the world map, if you mouse over them you can see their aggro circle. Walking into that circle will automatically start combat. Different monsters have different sized circles. You can also see what their party consists of and there will be a difficulty description such as Easy, Balanced, Difficult, Titanic. Difficult is doable with a well built party. You may lose a few party members during the fight but you can do it. Titanic is the highest difficulty I've seen so far. Going into these battles will basically wipe your entire party in a single turn. This can get annoying when you are forced to go through areas where its a fucking maze full of Titanic monsters. You have to slowly walk through by avoiding aggro circles. So you have to keep mousing over them to see their area and taking a step or two. If you have run on you'll end up dying a few times. And just to make it worse during the mazes you cannot save so you'll have to go back to the beginning every time. So this is finally a time for walk, but its so fucking slow. So you take multiple tries by overshooting your step or waste your time walking slow as fuck. Either way it both takes way too long so pick your poison.

In combat enemies have a party with the same formation setup as you, 4 slots in the front 4 slots in the back. Melee can only hit targets adjacent to them. With the exception of spears where you can hit one slot further. This means you can poke an enemy from the back row or poke an enemy hiding in their back row when you are in the front row. A melee on the corner slot cannot attack the enemies on the other sides. So you must be thinking, lets get some range and not worry about this formation bullshit. Unfortunately there are no archer type class. The closest you have are bards and thieves. Bards are buffers, they don't hit hard at all, and thieves are built to be front liners with daggers or swords. Bows are pretty shit and no one uses them. The exception is Gaulen who could use bows but he's the sturdiest character in the game so you want him in the front row. Not just as a tank but because he's the weakest character in the game and you might as well use him as a meat shield. So bows are out so I guess its up to magic! The three pure casters in the game are the Mage, the Cleric, and the Divine Summoner. The cleric is a healer so it doesn't have any damage. The Divine Summoner is basically what it sounds a summoner. Once you drop your summons you don't do anything. So I guess its up to the mage. They must be good right? Well to be honest, they are great when you first start. Spells have a 100% accuracy, they can hit any target anywhere, and they hit hard. However once you get to mid game you'll get into a big issue. Your PP drains in just a few spells. You can literally cast 3-5 spells before you run out and is are forced to drink a potion or stand there doing nothing. At least your damage is high for now. When you reach late game your damage starts petering out and your PP costs are so high you run out in 1-2 casts. So this is a game for melee! Melee characters start off with the most pitiful damage in the game and the worst accuracy I've ever seen in any game. You miss your attacks 75% of the time and against fast enemies like wasps expect a 10% hit rate at best. You can see the % when you mouse over a target. However once you get over the hump that is early game you start doing more damage than mages without the limiting factor of PP and you can actually take a hit. Some classes are also really shitty and worthless. Balance is a big issue.

Leveling is very old school. There are 5 attributes and every level you can spend one point in two of them. Strength increases your damage, Constitution increases your health, Agility increases something I don't care about, Speed increases the frequency of your turns, and Energy increases your PP. Basically the only stats that matter are STR, CON, and SPD. You only want enough Agility to wear weapons. Stack the crap out of speed so you can move multiple times before the enemy moves once. Energy sucks because you get 2 PP a level so say you are level 80 and you put one in it every level that is 160 bonus PP. That may look like a big number but you have to remember high level spells cost 200 PP a cast. You also get 5 skill points to drop into a pool of like 40 different skills. Each one takes like 80 levels to max out. The skills include stuff like different weapon masteries that increase accuracy/damage when using that weapon or Learning, which increases the % of exp gained. You might be wondering why you want that. Its because enemies don't respawn. Once you kill them they're gone forever. Even the ones that randomly attack you. Once they die they don't come back. There are many spells to learn as well depending on your class, skills that increases critical chances, non combat skills like Perception that lets you detect higher level traps, Exploration that slows down food consumption when walking, to Mercantile that increases money made from selling. Depending on the class the points required will be different. For example you want Gaulen to learn lock picking you need 3 skill points per level. On a thief, that same skill is only 1 skill point per level. Its overwhelming at first and you have no idea what to do, but its fairly straightforward after thinking about it. Just make Gaulen learn all the non combat garbage and be a meat shield and have the rest of your party learn combat skills.

Overall the game while having a few issues, is quite fun to play. Its not particularly difficult if you have a decent party. I had a Barbarian, a Thief, two Mages, and a Cleric as my party members. I haven't run into any problems so far. The story writing isn't bad. Its quite enjoyable but be prepared for some fairly bad voice acting. Give it a try if you like old school RPGS but don't expect a perfect game.