Lost Empire: Immortals - A warning

Oh it's out already?

Hmm, that's odd...it seemed pretty interesting. What are the battles like?

Oh no! An indie game? Run for the hills, everyone!

Looks OK to me. Will have to try out the demo, if there is one.

oh ****!!!! This game looks awesome! The simul-turn feature is something I CRAVED ever since Birth of the Federation, and the Military Doctrine looks like the idea I gave to stardock a few years ago!

And to say, I don't care about low-end graphics, if the game itself is pure awesome

Cikomyr, an Indie game does NOT mean simply low-end graphics. An Indie game means that there are multiple bugs, spelling mistakes, horrific UI which seems like it was pre-made with a fold and someone amateurishly glued text on it and more, while the maps and ships look like they are made from placard. This is not a retail game where only a few bugs here and there are apparent. I cannot exactly describe to you what Indie game actually means, I guess you will have to see for yourselves. Imagine Space Empires and you will understand what I mean.

Astax, it's not out officially on the storeshelves, but you can directly purchase it from the company's website, which I have.

Keilworth, the battles are...OK, I guess, for an Indie game that is.

ghostwes, oh puuulease. /ignore.

Anyway, the reason I'm giving all of you this warning is because that all the major review sites make the game appear like a new contender in the 4X scene, give beautiful screenshots and describe it as the next best major turn based game, yet this is merely another Indie game, which come a dime a dozen.

To Gormoth1:

First of all, clearly you don't have a good idea of the game creation process,if you did you would be able to know how hard is to make a game that gets even a mini positive preview and some good word from a gaming site and can impress gamers(like those game reviewers that had played 100's of "professional" games).Try to make games,and then put ALL the Indie scene in dime a dozen category.

Second, Space Empires is an AAA+ 4x class game, withing it's complexity came many bugs that are now mostly fixed through numerous patches.If you don't like increasingly complex games or somewhat simpler GFX like this,it's ok, your choice,but this is not a reason for this games to be bad,because the purpose for this game it's to forgo eye candy in favor of superb depth of play(you know like space empires: fighters, carriers,orbital bombarment ,custom starbases,tactical space AND ground combat,EXTREME modding capabilities,excellent diplomacy,multiplayer,the only thing that gone somewhat off is AI which is eventually fixed by mods and patches).Galciv can get many good ideas from this classic game.

Vanilla Space Empires is a bit weak on the balancing, though. But there are several mods out, which greatly enhance the base game.

Also, as m3nt0ras pointed out, it's rude to equal indie game with low quality. Look at Dominions. One of the best fantasy TBS out there, guess what, it's indie. Space Empires is indie, but still one of the great names in space TBS.

I'm in the process of writing a game myself, so I certainly take offense when you dismiss any game that doesn't have a huge staff of full time programmers behind it as 'badly implemented by nature'.


Maybe you should have waited for a demo first, or read not only reviews but player reactions on the games forum.

"Try to make games,and then put ALL the Indie scene in dime a dozen category" : This is a very irrelevant remark - I don't try to make games, since I have no skill in it but I do expect people who claim about making games to actually make them professional or at least warn me if they're not.

I'm very glad you like Space Empires. My friend liked it very much as well. But I really did not. In fact I really am not in the habit of purchasing Indie games, nor do I like them at all, and I expect to know from advance that I'm buying an unprofessionally made game BEFORE the purchase, which is the entire purpose of this thread.

I don't want to play the oh-so-liberal "everybody-got-a-place" shtick with my $30, thank you very much.

Edit: pndrev, I don't think it's that rude. Let's face it, these ARE low-quality games. They may have a great gameplay and ideas behind them, but they're made with almost no QA and no production values at all. I don't think I should apologize for not wanting to spend money on them. Oh, and I really disliked all the Dominions games.

Looks like a visual eyesore... I think I'll stick with GC2

Furthermore, pndrev, you have nothing to take offense about, as this got nothing to do with you at all. This is my personal preference, and I really am setting the limit here on what is considered inappropriate and what is not.

Most people will be disgruntled if they would pay full admittance price for a cinema ticket and then find out they are in an unprofessionally made student film, no matter how good it actually is. And they'd be right, too.

And I agree, I should have waited. But since I didn't, I'm posting this is a warning to all who missed it.

There are two versions of Lost Empire.
The first one is UI bugged and not much compatible with Vista because it was using DirectX 8.
The second "Lost Empire : Immortal" is a BIG overhaul of the first one and increase the gameplay.

Now the question which version did you got because the one available right now on Gamersgate is the first one

It seems you downloaded the original game (released in 2007)...not the current game which hasn't been released yet!

A patch for the original game will be released after the new game is published...

Again, you equal 'independent' with 'unprofessional'. And that, sorry, IS rude.

Independent only means the developer isn't part of a large company. True, there probably a lot of really bad indie games out there, but have you seen the buglist on some 'professional' games? Early JoWood titles, for example. Essentially bugridden and unplayable until patched.

Independent simply doesn't mean low-quality. Dominions has a full beta-testing program through their publisher and more content and depth than any other fantasy TBS I have seen in a long time. On the other hand, you get supposedly professional titles like Theatre of War, CM Shock Force which need patches before they are playable.

Don't get me wrong, I myself was disappointed with SE5 for a few reasons. But to go and say 'indie titles are low quality, have horrid UI and are full of bugs' is a gross oversimplification.

Lost Empire: Immortals....looks very interesting, I'll definitely be looking for any reviews for it.

You really don't know what an Indie game is do you, and quite frankly your attitude is insulting. Buggy games with crappy UI's and horrible graphics are everywhere, not just in Indie games. And yes good Indie games are professional, which is more than I can say about some of the shovelware that gets pushed out on the Wii or other systems.

If you want to see some good Indie games check out Aquaria or World of Goo.

I have played my share of Indie game, thank you very much, and I usually find them likely to think outside the box rather than follow the big-corporation trend and compete them by making yet-another-[Put generic kind of game that has been redone and redone].

Lost Empire by itself looks like a meld of excellent ideas, even if it was buggy. Immortals is said to be the same game, but less buggy, with improved game features all over it. I'd pay for that.

Stardock itself has been criticized a lot for some spelling mistakes (it's french version of GalCivII was simply a shame), it's bland interface, low-end graphics, etc... But the game itself was awesome. I am not the kind of person who will dismiss a good story because the book looks shitty, and spelling mistakes is in it. A good story is a good story, nevertheless, a good game is a good game, period.

Let's see how Immortals unfold.

And, to finish all, the game itself isn't on the shelves yet, but you came here and shat on it BEFORE it's release. Are you privy to some access we aren't?

He just bought the wrong game and didn't notice...that's all  :LOL: 

Oh for crying out loud:
http://www.gamersgate.com/index.php?page=product&what=view&sku=DD-LE

Put your money where your mouth is and go buy the damn thing before you degrade this thread even further to a flame war about piracy. I buy my games.

Now, if you don't agree, go right ahead. You can argue to your heart's content by yourselves. If you insist on getting insluted and going all liberal "high and mighty", by all means - enjoy yourselves. I do hope that at least someone was warned about it, though.

I'm outa here.

You completely misunderstand. It's not the fact that you find Lost Empires a bad game (which it might or might not be) that upsets, it's the fact that you go and generalise ALL indie games as inherently inferior.


PS: You linked to 'Lost Empire', not 'Lost Empire - Immortals'. Perhaps because the latter isn't (yet) available?

I do, as opposed to you.

You just linked us to Lost Empire.

Stop framing a game you haven't even played.

WWW Link

As you can see, the true Lost Empire : Immortals will be released tomorrow (11th March). We have before us either a liar, or a stupid man who can't tell the difference between two different games.

Hehe, yes, he's been playing the wrong game. Lost Empire and Lost Empire: Immortal are two different games.

Yep. Looks like he purchased the original Lost Empires (which by most accounts is indeed a somewhat flawed game). It's too bad that he wasn't paying attention and didn't wait another couple days for the *new* game to be released. :p 

I say that somewhat toungue-in-cheek, but it really is a pity. Because now he's going to go and bad-mouth this game to anyone and everyone, even though he's the one who was foolish enough to buy the old version. And since indie-made games like this can live or die on word-of-mouth, his rashness may hurt the game's developer.


I'm not saying that Lost Empire Immortals is going to be a good game (although I very much hope it will be) -- it could still end up being horribly flawed for all we know. But Gormoth1 should at least be man enough to admit he picked up the older (and by all accounts, crappier) version of the game, and that the new version could end up being very different from the original.

On the other hand, his criticisms of Lost Empire (the first one) is probably valid. The more the pity, because I heard that, indeed, L.E. was really flawed from the start.

I really find it a bad thing that the developper left their buying customers of L.E. behind to go remake the same game, but better, and without the flaws.

As opposed to the practice of a certain 'professional' company who just sells the same game over again every year with the appropriate '200x' suffix - without major improvements or bugfixes...

/irony

On the forums they've said they are considering ways to allow owners of the original game to get the new one for cheap.