Cross of the Dutchman Review

Maybe I'm just spoiled. Maybe that's it. I've been going over and over in my head exactly what it is about Cross of the Dutchman that makes it so unsatisfying to play. It's not a bad game. It's definitely not like Chariot Wars or The Weaponographist, where I was able to pinpoint (violently) what I disliked about it. I don't dislike anything about Cross of the Dutchman, it's a perfectly okay small game about a folk hero and his attempt to drive the Saxons from his homelands. Violently. With his fists. The art style is pretty terrific, the controls aren't too bad, and it's a nice little hack-and-slasher. 

But the game just falls a little short. Maybe not in what it is...it's a hack-and-slash actioner and that's really all I expected from it after a few minutes of play. But definitely in what it could be.  I just felt like after playing it, I hadn't experienced anything that I would really take time out of my day otherwise to do. And I suppose that's the real issue.

Cross of the Dutchman retells the story of Big Pier, or Pier Gerlofs Donia. A big man, fed up with what the occupying Saxons were doing to his people and his lands, Pier Donia decided to take the fight to them. First by beating the everloving crap out of every Saxon he could find, and then by rounding up a band of vigilantes and making targeted strikes on the Saxon forces, stealing supplies, and the like. The player takes the role of Pier, who starts out just trying to get through his day in the village. At first, the player only has a pair of fists and some basic moves, but as the story progresses, they gain companions, a sword, and even a plow at one point as they drive the hordes of vile Saxons from their land. The game alternates between regular hack-and-slash gameplay and stealth sections as you sneak around Saxons during night raids and hold your own against onslaught after onslaught of enemies. 

But here's where it breaks down a little. There's not much to do other than that. There's also not much in the way of tactics or anything other than "Run around, avoid getting hit, power up attack, release attack, repeat." The stealth sections contain moments where, if you go too far off the rails, the game penalizes you by having you caught by people who don't even appear onscreen. In fact, the game as a whole is pretty railsy, which is normally all right (not every game has to be an open-world extravaganza), but chafes when one of the things the game has you do is explore the wide-open levels looking for treasure chests, shortcuts, and alternate routes. 

Captured! By the forces of absolutely no one!

What you can do within those rules isn't really all that great, either. Pacing and progress in the game are slow. It makes sense for the narrative to have Pier not immediately get a sword and go to town on everyone, but spending that much time using his fists before getting the option of a sword just doesn't make that much sense game design-wise. The longer you keep players from progress, the more the players get frustrated with the game. In telling the story of how the legend becomes who he is, the fundamental satisfaction of being the legend is actually lost. Also, the aforementioned rails kind of left me feeling confined. 

All of this is a shame, because the game has some great points, too. The cutscenes are all illustrations, as if they came out of a rather cartoony stained glass window or illuminated manuscript, what voice acting there is isn't terrible, and the two-second sequence where I got to mow down people with a plow was good.

But for every decent sequence, there are six or seven problems with it. Combat doesn't flow, even with the sword. Sometimes you'll be able to hold down the mouse button and cleave through your enemies, sometimes you'll be unable to do anything of the kind, and Pier will stand there and get beat on. Most of the basic moves in combat are irrelevant anyway, as you will find yourself relying more and more on the obscene and unbalanced one-hit kill move that, conveniently enough, also works as an AOE and recharges with relative quickness. This turns the battles into a pattern of running around the map to recharge the super, taking out a cloud of Saxons, and then running around the map to recharge again. 

The tutorial sequences delving into parody doesn't exactly help either. It worked in Fairy Fencer F because it was just that kind of game. But Cross of the Dutchman is very much not that kind of game, and so when Pier's wife constantly talks about minimaps and the like, it just rings hollow.

In the end, I wouldn't recommend Cross of the Dutchman. It's not a great game, and what is there isn't enough to keep me interested. If I hadn't gotten this review copy, I wouldn't be giving it a second look, and I'm not sure anyone should.

2/5

Full disclosure: Reviewer received a free review copy of this game on Steam​

The Weaponographist Review

When I sat down to write this review, I found myself at a loss. With a game that fails this way on so many levels, what could one possibly address first?

It's pretty clear the game isn't good. There's not really a unifying theme, a lot of the mechanics are better implemented in other games, the weapons boil down to "mash attack as hard as you can," there's no real way to pick a loadout other than blind luck, and the near-constant waves of enemies are actually numbing at a certain point. I found my sensory input dissolving into generic music and bright colors as my fingers tapped the attack keys for reasons I could no longer understand. 

But, even with all of that, it's hard to pinpoint somewhere to start. Somewhere to point out where in the horrifying and sad mesh of monstrous machinery things begin to go wrong. 

But if it wasn't clear from the paragraphs above, I'd give The Weaponographist a wide berth. Despite the occasional good joke, there's really nothing to recommend the game when there is a glut of roguelikes that do it better and with more style than this one.
 

The game at its most distinctive

The Weaponographist stars Doug, a jerk of an adventurer who refuses to help the town of Hellside, and so is cursed to have all his weapons and gear disintegrate after repeated use. To save the town and weaken the curse, he must journey repeatedly into a dungeon full of strange monsters, clearing out each level with a variety of weapons he finds on the bodies of his foes, and the occasional chests that gallop across the screen. While death sends him back to the town above, Doug can weaken the curse and strengthen his abilities by giving the various denizens of the town "demon goo" in exchange for upgraded weapons, abilities, and chests. 

The game is a top-down arena shooter with elements of a roguelike. You charge into the dungeon, lay waste to as many monsters as you can with the weapons you can pick up, die, and then are resurrected in town to spend goop on upgrades and do it all over again. At the end of each "depth" of the dungeon, there's a big boss fight against a large enemy and a bunch of smaller ones, and then it's on to the next one. Lather, rinse, repeat. It's a formula many games use, and when you play a roguelike, it's half luck and half learning the systems through trial and error, then applying what you know to future delves into the dungeon.

But the game doesn't seem to be able to make up its mind. It gives you procedurally generated rooms, but limits them to the same three basic types per area, with little variation. It fills the dungeon up with monsters, but the enemy designs are kind of plain and have no real ties to any overall theme. The weapon degradation mechanic is interesting, but since not all enemies drop weapons, it's possible to face down an entire room of people armed only with the fists that serve as an ineffective default weapon. It feels like a lot of thought went into the idea of these systems, but not very much into the implementation of them.

Get used to this screen. You'll see a lot of it.

This is a problem that extends to the art, too. While the drawn art is well done with distinctive styles and ideas, from a top-down perspective, it looks like you're fighting clipart. Between the generic dungeon design and the painfully generic designs of ninjas and tommy gun-toting mobsters, The Weaponographist's visual style is best described as "boring cartoon fantasy". In fact...actually, I have the perfect way to describe this.

One of the better rooms, but still not great.

It looks like a lazy online game. It plays like a lazy online game. In fact, if this had shown up in some form or another on Kongregate or Newgrounds, I would have killed an hour or so playing it, then promptly forgotten about it entirely. It's not a particularly good arena shooter, as waves of the same four or five enemies careen around an empty room until you kill them all and a door opens to do it all over again and hope you're closer to the boss. It's not a particularly good roguelike, in that there's no strategy or skill or discovery. There's just persistent wave after wave of shooting. It gets frustrating after a while, because no matter how long you play, there's no appreciable difference in the gameplay. 

In case you're wondering, this is from Depth 2. Look how similar it is to Depth 1

To compare and contrast, I loaded up The Binding of Isaac recently. Isaac, a shooter/roguelike hybrid released in 2011, plays in some respects similar to Weaponographist: It's a dual-stick shooter with RPG elements where you go from dungeon to dungeon fighting monsters and bosses with a variety of weapons. But the difference is that Isaac is actually a lot of fun to play, combining a bizarre atmosphere with a vast weapon variety, distinct artwork, some interesting strategic quirks in gameplay, and haunting, discomforting music. Isaac feels like you're going somewhere even when you lose. The Weaponographist feels like you're going nowhere, and then slightly further into nowhere when you win.

In the end, I'd say I don't recommend The Weaponographist very much. The Binding of Isaac is currently on Steam for a little cheaper. If you want a better roguelike or a better arena shooter, both are in ample supply. I suggest playing any of those, and leaving this one alone. 

Score: 1 out of 5

Full Disclosure: The reviewer received a review copy of this game