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Number of Ratings: 21
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1 of
3 people found the following review helpful:
Procedurally generated fantasy., April 15, 2022This game is very similar to the previous 4x4 Galaxy. It is a procedural roguelike with items and combat. It's pretty addictive leveling up your character and gathering gold.
1 of
1 people found the following review helpful:
A full-featured CRPG, January 11, 2022(This is a lightly-edited version of a review posted to the IntFict forums during the 2021 IFComp. My son Henry was born right before the Comp, meaning I was fairly sleep-deprived and loopy while I played and reviewed many of the games, so in addition to a highlight and lowlight, the review includes an explanation of how new fatherhood has led me to betray the hard work the author put into their piece)
Going into this year’s Comp, I knew that my time for IF would be limited, so I resolved not to get too sucked into any of the “longer than two hours” games on offer, to make sure I was able to play as many games as possible. Well, here I am, my resolve in tatters: I’ve probably put five or six hours into 4x4 Archipelago over the last few days, and immediately upon winning was tempted to start again to try a different one of the I think three possible main plots driving this slick, addictive Twine CRPG.
I call 4x4A a CRPG advisedly, not to imply it’s not IF – ugh to genre gatekeeping – but to highlight how far it goes to deliver the features you’d expect in a mainstream CRPG. As your randomly-generated adventurer embarks on a voyage across the 16 islands making up the titular archipelago, you’ll encounter a clever skill system that starts you with two skills out of a choice of fighting and noncombat options; a robust inventory tied to an economy that stays relevant throughout the playtime; a main hub boasting shops, services, a library, and more; a multi-step primary quest and numerous fleshed-out side quests; a host of dungeons and mines, many with a boss at the end; and random encounters out the wazoo. Oh, and an automatically-updating journal that puts all the key information you’ll need at your fingertips – seriously, this thing is better than the journal in any AAA CRPG I can recall playing. Plus it’s all randomly generated so replay value is high.
Of course, just as the game delivers so well on the CRPG genre’s positives, it also inherits some of the weak points too. It can feel grindy, with a few too many dungeons that are a few rooms too long. My main character was a magician, and I definitely wound up with a bad 15-minute-workday habit. Plus the early stages can feel a little tough, as you go from island to island building out a list of fun stuff to do but the ability to complete only like 10% of the tasks given how much of a greenhorn you are. But I can’t lie, there’s comfort-food pleasure even in these hoary irritants. 4x4A is the kind of game that isn’t always well-served by the Comp, since it’s long and a bit outside the genres that traditionally do well, but it’s super fun and I’m definitely looking forward to coming back to it post-Comp.
Highlight: The game sets out clear patterns and expectations around how side-quests work and the geography of the archipelago, but it also doesn’t hesitate to break those patterns to create some cool moments of surprise.
Lowlight: The writing here is actually better than it needs to be – here’s the description of one island: “The forests of Old Oak Island remember ancient times. They are dark and foreboding, and hide numerous secluded gorges and valleys. Many islanders are woodcutters, hunters, or pig farmers; local long-haired, black pigs are grazed in the oak woods, where they gorge themselves on acorns.” But it’s too bad that the well-crafted text really fades into the background as the gamier aspects take over and you visit the same places and encounter the same monsters over and over.
How I failed the author: Henry was having some rougher days sleep-wise whie I was playing this one, so after starting out the game and getting about an hour in, I didn’t get back to it until a few days later, only to find my saves were wiped (there may have been an update in the interim?) Too bad, Titus the Swashbuckler, but Letho the Tinkerer found the Heavenly Spire in your place!
- Wanderlust, December 27, 2021
- TheBoxThinker, December 16, 2021
- Bobsson, November 24, 2021
- E.K., November 22, 2021
- Spike, November 17, 2021
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3 people found the following review helpful:
Lots to do, November 14, 2021I found this game very addicting. I had a hard time putting it down, even though there were things about it that frustrated me.
First, this is an RPG. It kind of reminds me of a solo module, or a gaming paperback, like the Fighting Fantasy books. Except 4x4 is randomized, so even though some of the content is similar, enough changed that I found playing again to be just as much fun.
I have played two 5-hour session, each one with a different character. The first character I chose was a trickster, whose skills were magic and charisma. I think my mistake was that I tried to increase her fighting ability, when I probably should have concentrated on learning more spells. Even after hours of exploring, the character still was not effective against difficult opponents. I have not finished the story with this character yet.
So I picked a mercenary for the second try. This character didn't have the charisma to get me certain advantages, but was it was a lot easier to get strong enough to actually finish some of the quests.
This is a really big game with a lot of content. I think the author balanced everything out very well. There are a lot of other things to do besides fight, and a good amount of stats to track.
I played this game so I could score it for IFComp 2021. I am very lucky that I got to this game last. If I had gotten into it earlier on, I might have been so absorbed with it, I might not have had time to give some of the other games a chance.
- mg51, November 3, 2021
- OverThinking, October 27, 2021
- Joakin Thorne (Rio de Janeiro, Brazil), October 18, 2021
- Zape, October 10, 2021
9 of
9 people found the following review helpful:
A long, complete Twine RPG with multiple classes and quests, October 10, 2021Last year, the author released a game called 4x4 Galaxy, where you played a star fighter visiting 16 planets (arrranged on a grid), battling, gaining weapons, having different skills and different quests.
I really enjoyed it, but it got a bit tedious near the end of each playthrough.
This game is better than that one, though. This is a fantasy version and has more variety and more descriptive writing. Not only was I not burnt out by tediousness at the end, I was trying to find ways to extend my gameplay.
My character was a swashbuckler, and I focused a lot on combat. You start out with very few hitpoints and a couple of basic attacks, but enough to have some strategy (for instance, using a sword gives you the option to stun, while with a bow you can ignore damage reduction). By the end of the game, I had several legendary weapons, and could switch between sending out a half-dozen arrows from a giant's bow and using a finishing strike with 'the really really big sword'.
There are a ton of sidequests and they have excellent rewards. The main goal changes from game to game; mine was to assemble four pieces of a pirate's treasure map, and that involved things like becoming famous and defeating a pirate's ghost.
I did get really frustrated near the end of my several-hours playthrough when exploring the optional area (Spoiler - click to show)Coral Cove, which is a (Spoiler - click to show)maze with a kraken that attack randomly while walking around. I got very lost, and I gave up on it. In a future playthrough, I'd probably just map it out.
I don't think this game is for everyone; the opening is kind of overwhelming in terms of sheer number of options to try, and there is a lot of grinding, but I always enjoyed grinding fantasy RPGs as a kid.
There were a small number of errors. At one point </span> was used instead of <span>, leaving some raw code; a pirate threatened to conquer the land of [undefined], and a lot of dungeons that had events in their first room ended up overlapping the text compass. But these were minor in comparison to the very large amount of material in the game that worked great.
As a final note, the core gameplay here is similar to Sunless Sea and Sunless Skies, so if you like one such game you might like the others.
- Cargus, October 4, 2021
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