Will add more info in a few minutes (EDIT: hours, sorry). Main takeaway is the microtransactions are mainly to revive your character on the spot, letting you avert all of the usual roguelike mechanics.
Platform: PS4 (digital only)
Genre: Roguelike, Souls-ish
Developer: Grasshopper Manufacture
Publisher: Gung-Ho Online Entertainment
Release Dates: December 3, 2016 (Worldwide)
Price: Free with micro-transactions
ESRB Rating: M (Blood and gore, nudity, Sexual Themes, Strong Language, Use of Drugs, Violence)
PEGI Rating: ?
File Size: 23.1GB (Need 8.5GB to start playing)
Text Language: English
Audio Language: English
Extra Links: English Website, Japanese Website
Take Dark Soul's combat, simplify it a little, and add rogue-like mechanics to make up the difference, and you basically have Let It Die. The game tasks you with climbing each of the 128 floors of the Tower of Barbs, defeating enemies and finding equipment along the way. Each piece of equipment has its own properties (slash, blunt, pierce, fire, lightning, poison), and after sustaining a certain number of hits, they will break, forcing you to scavenge for replacements. You'll need to make good use of evading and blocking to avoid an untimely death, while monitoring your stamina to ensure you don't become winded and open to attacks.
And, much like the Souls games, death is core to the game. When you die, you lose every piece of equipment on your person (but not those in your storage box, much like in roguelike games). With each death, you also gain ways of upgrading future characters, but at the same time your previous characters, with all of your old equipment, will resurrect, as Haters. These Haters will then roam the area where you died, and you will be forced to kill them to reclaim all of your stuff. Characters from other players' games can also appear as Haters, who can invade your game to claim your characters. If that happens, you can either enter their game to take them back, or pay a ransom if you can't be bothered.
Let It Die features music from over 100 Japanese bands, with sound direction by Akira Yamaoka.
delSai has put together a thread with gameplay previews here.
Hawkian has also compiled this amazing gameplay primer:
Platform: PS4 (digital only)
Genre: Roguelike, Souls-ish
Developer: Grasshopper Manufacture
Publisher: Gung-Ho Online Entertainment
Release Dates: December 3, 2016 (Worldwide)
Price: Free with micro-transactions
ESRB Rating: M (Blood and gore, nudity, Sexual Themes, Strong Language, Use of Drugs, Violence)
PEGI Rating: ?
File Size: 23.1GB (Need 8.5GB to start playing)
Text Language: English
Audio Language: English
Extra Links: English Website, Japanese Website
Take Dark Soul's combat, simplify it a little, and add rogue-like mechanics to make up the difference, and you basically have Let It Die. The game tasks you with climbing each of the 128 floors of the Tower of Barbs, defeating enemies and finding equipment along the way. Each piece of equipment has its own properties (slash, blunt, pierce, fire, lightning, poison), and after sustaining a certain number of hits, they will break, forcing you to scavenge for replacements. You'll need to make good use of evading and blocking to avoid an untimely death, while monitoring your stamina to ensure you don't become winded and open to attacks.
And, much like the Souls games, death is core to the game. When you die, you lose every piece of equipment on your person (but not those in your storage box, much like in roguelike games). With each death, you also gain ways of upgrading future characters, but at the same time your previous characters, with all of your old equipment, will resurrect, as Haters. These Haters will then roam the area where you died, and you will be forced to kill them to reclaim all of your stuff. Characters from other players' games can also appear as Haters, who can invade your game to claim your characters. If that happens, you can either enter their game to take them back, or pay a ransom if you can't be bothered.
Let It Die features music from over 100 Japanese bands, with sound direction by Akira Yamaoka.
delSai has put together a thread with gameplay previews here.
Hawkian has also compiled this amazing gameplay primer:
I hadn't heard anything about this game until just seeing this OT pop up on the front page earlier in the week and seeing the description and thinking "welllll that sounds amazing..." Didn't even realize it was a Suda51 project at the time.
The more I learned and watched gameplay footage, the more I discovered that while the Dark Souls parallels and inspiration were obvious, "roguelike" wasn't actually all that true. It's certainly a dungeon crawler, but the penalties for death are simply not all that severe... I mean depending on your choices and spending money, they don't necessarily even exist. You never really permanently lose your character. Death is actually a lot more inspired by the process of going back to retrieve your souls in the From games rather than permadeath.
That's when it kind of hit me that this project is much like a reimagining of Dark Souls as an arcade game. And I don't mean a game with "arcadey gameplay," I mean what if Dark Souls was a game you actually went to an old-school physical arcade to play. I mean I've already seen people in here mention the familiar feeling that spending Death Metals on death can evoke... popping a couple more quarters into the machine. It puts me in the mind of something like Ghosts N' Goblins, a punishing experience with a bit of a bizarre tone that just kind of assumes you'll keep coming back for more and... well, just one more...
This was, I swear to god, before I learned that the gameplay is framed within the game as playing Let it Die the videogame in an in-universe arcade, a conceit which kinda made me fall in love instantly.
Anyway, it does borrow from the Souls games the notion of overloading the player with systems so obtuse and so numerous that you basically just HAVE to go online and read or ask others about it. To that end I've been collecting both common questions I've seen and some of the misconceptions I've noticed people forming during gameplay streams.
Many intermediate to advanced aspects of the game are not included here... I don't even get into the asynchronous multiplayer bits at all. But I'm sure the community will cover all that soon enough.
Here are some tips in no particular order... plenty of this is surely covered by the balloons, but there's a lot to retain.
- Controls
- Important Controls That are Not Listed
-Holding Triangle charges up a rage attack, then hitting L2 or R2 performs the rage move with that hand's weapon. You store up to 3 rage "charges" (the number next to your HP) and no more. Different weapons' rage moves consume different amounts of rage meter and have different effects. The fist rage move consumers only one charge. You can use rage moves from ranged weapons even if they are out of ammo. When an enemy is dazed, holding Triangle near them, then choosing L2 or R2 performs a "Goretastic" finishing move that gives you bonus rewards.
-L1 and R1 are secondary attacks that are unlocked after raising mastery with that weapon. For two-handed weapons, L2/L1 and R2/L2 are different attacks.
-While at full sprint, press X for a drop-kick. This has a lot of knockback, great for unsuspecting solitary targets and very slow ones like Scratch Tubers (whom it completely wrecks). Missing leaves you vulnerable.
-X on a downed enemy to stomp them. This is basically free damage if you can knock an enemy over (such as with a drop kick). Some weapons will modify this attack when equipped.
-Press O immediately before an enemy attack hits to Perfect Guard and knock them back.
-You can hold O after a dodge to block immediately after coming out of the roll. This is useful if you're dodging an attack when other enemies will likely be chasing you and following up. However, generally running around and dodging attacks is preferably to blocking altogther, since you still take damage while blocking.
-R3 (click right stick) will lock on, and then to switch targets without unlocking, press up on the D-pad. You can also click R3 again, recenter the camera, and click to lock onto a new target.
Generally, lock-on is best used when kiting a single target, and avoided when fighting groups.
-In Throw Mode, press O to cancel out and put the item back in your pocket. Stand near a fire in throw mode and you'll get an X prompt to cook.
-When sneaking up on an enemy from behind, or you have the high ground above one, you get contextual prompts for high-damage attacks.- Stamina
The visible heart is your stamina meter. It goes from yellow to red to purple- at which point you'll stop and become vulnerable for a moment. Sprinting, attacking, and dodging drain it in ascending order.
- Leveling Up
Leveling up is performed by Mingo Head who reminds me of a sentinel from the Matrix, right at the base of the escalator to Ikegara. You can't level up in the tower, but instead spend your XP here once you return to the waiting room.
Every point you put into a stat raises your level by one.
Stats:
After you kill your first hater (your tutorial character), I recommend turning around and immediately going back down the escalator into the waiting room. This unlocks several remaining features in the waiting room (Mingo Head, the healing/transfer fountain, fighter freezer) before you get any deeper into the tower. You can heal up and switch back to your original character if you prefer. Use the bank to transfer any items between characters you might have found.
Following this, as you traverse the first floor and earn some XP, you may want to run back to the waiting room and actually spend some XP on some early levels to make clearing the first floor easier.
- Weapon Mastery (and the Glory of Fists)
You earn weapon mastery points for every killing blow you strike with that weapon. Unlocking higher mastery levels (up to 20) adds passive bonuses and even additional moves for some weapons. Unlike XP, items, weapons, armor and coins, this is carried between characters, so even if they have never touched that weapon they will have the bonuses.
Since your fists:
1) Are always available
2) Have infinite durability in comparison to other weapons
I recommend killing enemies with them as often as possible early on (remember, you only need to get the death blow with them to increase mastery), to get them up to mastery level 20. Fists also have a quick rage move with strong knockback that you can use multiple times. You can always count on your fists when you aren't sure what else is available to you.
- Items and Durability
You can find blueprints to be able to craft both weapons and armor in the shop in the waiting room. Once you have found a blueprint you can craft that item as much as you like, but only one at a time.
As you use any weapon (besides your fists) it will decrease in durability. Different weapons decrease at different rates. At the shop, the remaining durability of an item does not change its sell value, so it makes sense to use items until they are low durability and then stash them to sell.
- Enemy Friendly Fire
Enemies can and will harm one another with their attacks. Far from slight incidental damage, they can seriously kick the crap out of each other if they have strong attacks or attack in wide arcs. Try baiting individual enemies in groups that seem to have wide swings and thin a crowd before using your own attacks, especially if you're low on durability at the outset of a battle.
- Continuing After Death
There are three ways to regain a Fighter upon death:
- Use a Death Metal, the premium currency, to immediately revive as though you hadn't died.
- Use Kill Coins to buy your Fighter back from the freezer, complete with all the items and coins the had upon death.
- Return to the spot where the Fighter died and defeat them as a Hater, at which point they will be returned to your freezer at no charge- but without their collected items.
In general, as tempting as it may be, you'll likely want to avoid using Death Metals for instant revive unless you're a particularly compelling moment- about to reach a new floor, having just collected a ton of valuable items, about to beat a boss, etc. Kill Coin prices to revive your Fighter are pretty reasonable and you can work on another character while making the journey back to the Haterfied version if you choose to do it that way.
Before logging off, you must return to the waiting room or the game will treat your fighter as having died wherever you left it.
- Haters
Any player who dies leaves their Fighter as a Hater in the spot they died- and other players' characters may appear in that spot in your game. This means that even high level characters can appear on low floors, and may be in unpredictable spots, so stay alert.
Haters are very aggressive, but they all seem to have the same AI- stay calm and keep them staggered, and you can "punch above your weight."
- Obtaining Death Metals
In addition to their function as "quarters" in the machine, you can expand your storage locker with Death Metals.
Obviously, you can buy these from the cash shop for real money, which a deal on larger bulk purchases.
You also get some as login bonuses. For your first 10 days playing, you will get packs of 4 on your 1st, 4th, and 7th day logging in (they don't need to be consecutive).
They are also available as rewards for some quests.
It's not known quite yet how login bonuses will work following these first 10 days.
- Rewards Box vs. Uncle Prime vs. Mail
Quest rewards and login bonuses go to the rewards box, the cylindrical metal mailbox in the waiting room. These seem to arrive as soon as you log in, with a daily reset (unsure of time).
Uncle Prime is a separate daily reward that comes in a shiny box on a cart at the bottom of the escalator to enter the tower. It contains a random login bonus in-game item(s) each day. After opening the box, this one has a 20-hour countdown timer until the next day's can be accessed. Uncle Prime pacakages can contain death metals.
When you get the message "You've got mail," this is a message for you on the first tab of your Underworld Rolodex.
- Hunger effects
Your Fighter will experience some ill effects if you go to long without eating something- a reduction in your passive health regeneration and lower stamina. Don't go too long without chowing down even if your health is full.
If anyone notes anything inaccurate or incomplete in this info please let me know.
