ROSS'S GAME DUNGEON: THE CHOSEN

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Behold The Chosen: Well of Souls! I'm over a full week late with this episode than I was intending to, though in my defense, it grew into a monstrosity I wasn't expecting. I originally thought this episode would be around 15 minutes, but it grew into a whopping 42 minutes as I found there was so much I wanted to say about it that I didn't want to leave out. While I cut material out of every episode that I think isn't the most vital, The Chosen is so packed full of "why did they do this" moments, that it was harder for me to leave so many out of the video. This really took a lot of time for me to do editing-wise, so I think the next episode will almost certainly be a shorter one, although I have lots of stuff planned.

I'd say it's safe to expect more videos this month, though The Chosen should remind me never to promise deadlines since I often underestimate how much work a video needs by a few dozen hours. In any event, I'm looking forward to getting more out! Also something not mentioned in the video is those shaman guys will resurrect each other in a potentially endless cycle.

EDIT:

I also meant to add this episode may have my favorite ending of any Game Dungeon so far.

COMMENTS

Thank you for the sacrifice you made by playing this game. I can imagine having tooth pulled out without drugging you is more enjoyable (btw i have that experience- yes, really).

But bad voice acting suggestion: Men of War campaign- it actually has worse voice acting than this game, even if (arguably) better lines. To my knowledge, voice actors were russians and they tried to do russian accent on top of already existing accent, while trying to make voice sound different. It ended up being so bad, that it was barely understandable. For example, one character in campaign is named "Viktor" (common name in areas that were under russian empire before ww1). Voice actor pronounces it as "Vikktrr" (with "i" barely sounding, making it more sound like "Vkktrr", while in reality both "i" and "o" should be pronoinced clearly, more sounding like "Victor")

Awesome episode! Yet another game I'll never play, but will be fondly remembered.

That was really worth the wait. I do think you should have put the "Ed Wood" stuff at the beginning. There was a certain loss of...something, maybe optimism...as you start to get into how you hated the game, so I would have liked your thoughts on how someone must have poured their soul into it a little earlier. If that makes any sense.

What was the version you we're playing, Ross? The freeware version is much much easier. I accepted your challenge and started a warrior and played a little bit past the first major problem you encountered. Namely, the Vred Solidus that was able to one-shot you.

It only took me like 10-15 hits to kill it. You can kite pretty effectively even in melee fights so it was a pretty non-threatening fight. Even when I did get hit, it only took off like 1/5 of my life.

In my opinion, ranged weapons suck. They have much lower damage than melee weapons to offset how safe they are. Also, putting points into vitality and having armor is important. Your Helpers are pretty good too, just try to protect them.

Still the game is pretty bad and the combat is repetitive, but not unplayably bad so far.

6.5/10

They really tried hard, but it looks like they weren't sure of the direction they wanted with the gameplay. I actually assumed they wanted you to stop and grind when you got to the third map.

Hey folks. As this clocks in at around 42 minutes, the subtitles will be delayed. I'll announce when they're done.

Thanks for your patience, everyone!

@Dan: Considering the length, we wouldn't mind waiting a while. It's cool.

I'm starting to think this game could have potential for the Uwe Boll treatment. I reckon he'd definitely ditch most of the game's story and slap in his own.

Another thing, is it me or did the Archer's voice remind me of Magda? Aside from the voice actress being probably Polish.

Srake, he was playing the hard-as-nails version, the original. try that one on for size

Level 3 of this game is like what the general gaming public think Dark Souls is. Just ridiculous, unforgiving difficulty. In actuality, Dark Souls is a completely fair challenge (save for two or three specific scenarios that are genuinely poorly designed throughout the series). The difficulty and "Prepare to Die" memes are just clickbait details made up by journalists to get more views that was then picked up by Bandai/Namco's marketing to attract more attention.

But that level of nonsense difficulty makes me think that you might've been doing something wrong unknowingly. Like, perhaps those enemies have a specific weakness that takes them out much faster. And maybe there's a way to be more resistant to that green poison. I've a hard time believing the development team sat down, played it, and said "Yep, this is finished," without using some other true strategy that's actually better.

If not, then I suppose the only real way to make that level not a complete waste of time is to just cheat.

Maybe the original release of the game had a bug like the original X-Com did? In the original X-Com, a bug resulted in the easiest difficulty being chosen no matter what option you picked when you made a new game (that's why TFTD is insanely hard, people complained the original was too easy). If the freeware version is easier and no reviews of the game seem to mention the insane difficulty, maybe whatever release Ross got was just bugged and irreversibly set to some insane level of difficulty. There certainly seems to be SOMETHING wrong with the game, I can't imagine that difficulty spike is intentional.

Someone on reddit was quite curious about something

"...If I could ask Ross which game was more needlessly grindy, this or Revenant[1] , I wonder which he'd pick.

Probably Revenant, because he actually finished this one, but I'd still like to put the question to him."

^Somebody tell the dude he can pitch his question on the next video chat. I like to hear Ross's answer about that

Nice episode. I can see you put a lot of effort into it. Yet, I kinda sorry to say that I don't understand the point. You spent 40 minutes explaining to us why this game is bad. Is this what "game dungeon" is about? The game wasn't bad in any particularly bizarre way, just bad gameplay. The voice-acting was funny (the REAL eastern-european accent for once, hollywood should take a note ), but it doesn't warrant a 40-minutes episode. There are hundreds of games with bad gameplay, especially diablo-style action RPGs. Why exactly did you pick that one?

So, I think this episode doesn't answer one important question: why should we care about this strange game we never heard about? And this undermines all the efforts.

This was as always an excellent video and a worthy addition to the series, yet another game I'll never want to play! ;p There was a user on Youtube who summed it up better than I could; "On behalf of all fans, I apologize to you, Ross. I know how bad it feels that the worse the game is, the funnier the review. As I laugh at your torment, I ask for your forgiveness." I have to wonder how games like this ever get released in such an unpayable state, don't they playtest their own games thoroughly? How does something like Level 3 happen? I have a vague theory which revolves around the premise that small game development teams are likely to be close friends, and that out of a misplaced sense of kindness and politeness towards their fellow programmers fail to point out the glaring problems in gameplay and handling. I didn't see any game testers or play testers credited at the end of the The Chosen's final cutscene. Am I way off base in assuming they playtested the game themselves, without outsourcing the job due to finances, and in a spate of over-optimistic well-wishing forgot to actually subject their own title to any kind of critical analysis?

When I saw the title art for this episode I laughed so hard I actually had to pause the video.

Hey === Ross ===, do you describe the picture to the artist in details or just tell him the general idea? Like "this is a XIX century-ish game where a girl shoots monsters with a minigun, each of them taking a couple of minutes"?

Thank you for the sacrifice you made by playing this game. I can imagine having tooth pulled out without drugging you is more enjoyable (btw i have that experience- yes, really).

Same - I'd rather have more teeth pulled than having to play this game.

I've actually played this game and unsurprisingly I gave up the 3rd level at the point the first of those 103-hit mob boss monsters appeared. I thought it was a bug with the game and I gave up after reloading the game a few times in a useless attempt at fixing the problem. The difficulty spike would be forgivable if the fighting was much more fun, but basic hack and slash mechanics and "kiting" is not my idea of fun. I'm glad Ross articulated my frustration with the game as so far I've only met incredulity and patronisation from most other gamers, especially hack and slash fans.

Hey Ross, is there a way to download this Episode ? I have no Internet at home since I moved and i would need some game Dungeon as a bed time Story !! Also missed the last Video Chat, is there a Podcast to download ? I only have Internet for the next 30mins so answer quick !!!

Hey Ross, is there a way to download this Episode ? I have no Internet at home since I moved and i would need some game Dungeon as a bed time Story !! Also missed the last Video Chat, is there a Podcast to download ? I only have Internet for the next 30mins so answer quick !!!

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/video-downloadhelper/

And also

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=download+video+from+youtube