Conan Chop Chop: Review

"Roguelike" for four based on "Conan the Barbarian", which publishes Funcom, authors of many hits, including The Longest Journey, The Secret World and Conan Exiles… Agree, it sounds cool. How is it played??

Laughter, but that’s all

As you know, the universe of “Conan the Barbarian” is quite serious and brutal. But Conan Chop Chop has an emphatically frivolous atmosphere. The plot is as follows. The evil sorcerer Thoth-Amon performed a ritual to summon a powerful demon, who was already delighted: “And again the whole world will lie at my feet…” Stop, but where are the legs?? There are no legs, which means the ritual is not completed. The demon needs to find a suitable heroic body to inhabit.

To do this, Thoth-Amon decided to lure the best heroes of Hyboria into a trap and organized the “Razgromaton” tournament, where you need to sequentially, in splendid isolation or in a company of four players, go through several regions and kill a bunch of strong enemies, including bosses.

Actually, this is where the local humor almost ends. Yes, you can run around with a chicken, shoot chicken eggs again, from which, with a certain chance, another hen will hatch, and in general you can feel an ironic atmosphere. But nothing more.

Not cool classes

Like a bagel Conan Chop Chop does not offer anything fundamentally new. Moreover, claims can and should be made against her. For example, there are not enough more interesting, unique classes. In addition to Conan, there are two more warriors – Valeria and Pallantide, as well as the archer Belit. Each has different skills, but in reality they all hit with melee weapons and shoot from a bow in approximately the same way, they all have an analogue of the dash – Conan, like a true barbarian, jumps on enemies and stuns them, and Pallantide rushes forward and stuns opponents with a blow from his shield.

There are also ultimate attacks, mainly https://spinsheavencasino.org in the area – Conan accumulates rage and releases it, Pallantid roars and stuns everyone around, causing gradually increasing damage, Valeria spins with her sword like a top, and Belit releases a cloud of arrows. That is, in general, everything is monotonous, and perhaps only Konan and Belit differ in their style, but the archer’s “ult” is inconvenient to use.

Finally, as we progress, we learn new abilities for each character, which are retained in all subsequent attacks. But even there there are few unique things, and mostly these are standard bonuses to health, additional slots for amulets, the ability to start the game with a bonus supply of gold or a piece of healing ham. This does not mean at all that all four heroes are identical, but I would like more uniqueness and diversity.

Saving amulets

The words about “magical world generation” also cause bewilderment – they say it makes each playthrough unique. Maybe, of course, I didn’t understand something or didn’t notice, but in fact, this is a rare situation for roguelikes, when after just a few playthroughs you literally memorize both the order of the rooms and the location of the chests. There are, of course, differences, but they are usually minimal.

In fact, what really brings uniqueness to each playthrough and the style of the heroes and what is the main success of the game is a bunch of different equipment that we find in chests, buy with collected gold or order from the village blacksmith for much rarer steel.

As you pass through and use the services of artisans, the village is rebuilt, and the range of goods increases.

With all these shields, swords, maces and armor, everything is more or less clear. They differ in attack/defense parameters, and also provide additional bonuses, calculated as a percentage – for example, there is a sword with the feature “Dash for 5.5 seconds increases the chance of critical damage by 37%” and a bow, from which arrows fired with a 33% probability “leave a trace of a random element”.

All this may seem insignificant, but Conan Chop Chop good because it allows you to combine the effects of items, enhancing all these percentages and bonuses. As soon as I put on my Conan not only the aforementioned sword with a dash effect that increases the chance of critical damage, but also an amulet that multiplies the dash counter, the boss was defeated in splendid isolation, and quite easily.

Of particular interest are amulets that change the rules or provide additional capabilities – there is the already mentioned shooting not with arrows, but with eggs, bombs or even sand, calling a chicken or a slug as permanent assistants, adding poison to melee attacks, a chance to increase in size after killing an enemy (damage also increases), and so on. Nothing particularly new, but still works great and adds a unique feel to every run.

Yes, the roguelike from Conan Chop Chop turned out to be controversial – I haven’t yet talked about technical flaws (for example, bugs) at release. But still, the project deserves attention due to the variety, if not of classes, then of equipment and the effects/capabilities they provide. Especially if you play in co-op, where all possible shortcomings are compensated by the recklessness of the co-op mode.

Pros: ironic style and atmosphere; exciting gameplay with the ability to combine the effects of different pieces of equipment; cheerful co-op; stylish picture.

Cons: few really interesting classes; random generation works mainly only for dropped items; technical problems, including bugs.