Krater Review

Another day, another Diablo clone. But wait, that’s not really the case here. A dungeon crawler it may be, but there are enough differences in here to distinguish it from Diablo and its ilk. Krater is an aRPG set in post-apocalyptic Sweden, of all places. It has a wonderful aesthetic, some funny dialogue and considering it is still being updated, performs brilliantly. Unfortunately it’s not all roses. Read on to find out more.

As mentioned, post-apocalyptic Sweden is where we’re at, set around the crater spelled in that special way only video-games are allowed to do. The world is brilliant, with strangely bright colours considering the settings, offset by almost everyone wearing a gas mask, which makes them mumble incoherently when they talk. The place is even home to a furniture company called IDEA. It truly is a great game world that has been designed. It’s just saddening there isn’t more to do in it, and what we can do has some issues.

The biggest problem is, Fatshark seem to have implemented elements that go against the very thing aRPG’s stand for - simplicity and a solid progression system is thrown out the window in favour of something new. While it’s commendable they’re trying to mix things up a bit, that doesn’t strictly mean it’s a good thing. While levelling a single character to extreme power may be old fashioned, it works in this type of a game, but here we have a system where at first, you have three characters - a Bruiser (tank who soaks up the damage), Medikus (medic who, well, heals) and a Regulator (casts debilitating effects on enemies). This is all well and good, even if the roles are very MMO-ish in nature, however not long after you start the game, you’ll also get a Slayer (pure damage dealing). Since you can only have three party members it means you’ll have to either never use the Slayer you’ve just unlocked, or use him but get rid of someone else, where it would have been far simpler to simply have a four character party, enabling you to have one of each. It gets worse, though. All four of these characters can only be levelled up to level 5, once this is done they can no longer evolve, meaning you have to get rid of them and ‘recruit’ newer versions of them, from a recruitment NPC in town, who can then level up to 10, then once that’s done get rid and recruit members who can level up to 15 and so on. The worst part is, each time you recruit ‘higher’ level characters they all start at level 0, meaning you are effectively starting from scratch because the game wants to make you grind in what seems like a backwards way of increasing playtime. It also breaks any story immersion, as the three you start with will be gone within an hour, and once you’re controlling an entirely new party they will react to people like they were at certain events in the story, when in fact I was using an entirely different party.

To control your characters you have an awkward strategy game-type interface, where you can drag the mouse over your characters to select one, two or all three of them. Again, something new but altogether pointless and at times annoying. On more than one occasion I found myself looking for my medic only to find I misclicked a few seconds ago and he was standing off-screen, meaning I couldn’t heal and promptly died. This brings me to death itself in the game, which is again handled in an awkward manner. Each time a character is ‘killed’ they can be revived on the spot and they will have incurred an injury. These can be healed by a doctor in one of the games towns, but if left to accrue more injuries there’s a chance that character could die. Permanently. The thing is, permanent death is usually something that can be exhilarating (see The Witcher 2 for a rage-inducing, but perfect example), but here, since we can’t customise characters at all and are replacing them when they are no longer of use, there’s no connection. You simply sigh, head back to town, hire a replacement and grind for the replacement so you can continue onwards.

The combat in the game is another sticking point. Since you are controlling three characters and it is hot-key based combat, each character has only two abilities at any given time, bound to the number keys 1 - 2, 3 - 4, 5 - 6, and that’s it. Along with zero feeling of physical contact when fighting, it leaves the entire thing feeling like a chore, not great when it’s what you are going to spend the majority of the game doing. I understand Fatshark’s train of thought in changing things up, and really, I want to applaud them for it, but the features are too awkwardly implemented.

Also featured is a crafting system, where you gather resources and blueprints from defeated monsters (as well as the useless ‘vendor trash’ you’ll collect just to sell). Crafted items can be anything from items that give your strength a boost to things that allow your healer to do his job better. Again, though, unless you take them off when replacing a character (which I of course forgot to do) you’ll have to buy/find the items and craft again, more grinding I’m afraid.

On a more positive note, the game has a fully rotatable free camera, meaning there’s no chance of not being able to see something, and if the mood takes you it can allow you to use the awkward party management to put your characters in a somewhat tactical arrangement. The dialogue, or the text beneath the mumblings, rather, for the most part is good, with some funny lines thrown in for good measure and as mentioned, it looks great and runs like a dream.

While the game is only playable solo offline at the minute, as of July 10th co-op play will be implemented, as well as PVP at a later date. Co-op is something that could instantly save the game, because as flawed as it is, I really want to like it and give Fatshark my support for being bold with certain genre standards, but as a single player game I just can’t do it. A simple co-op experience where you only focus on one character while your friends control others could make a huge difference. While it looks great and runs great, there just isn’t enough meat to the combat, and the replacement of characters at arbitrary levels just to make you grind from nothing again is a very odd design decision.

Definitely not a bad game, far from it. While it may be awkward to manage your party and short on abilities, the combat works and while the story of getting old world riches from before the crater incident is boring, the world it’s set in and the characters you’ll meet are great and full of charm. Hopefully improved massively by co-op play, I’ll come back to this game when the update has been released and re-evaluate based on that, but as a single player game, it’s worth it only if you’re desperate for something new in the aRPG genre.