Laughs, but that’s about it.
As you know, the Conan the Barbarian universe is quite serious and brutal. Conan Chop Chop, on the other hand, has an emphatically unserious atmosphere. The plot follows. The evil sorcerer Thoth-Amon performed the ritual of summoning a powerful demon, who had already rejoiced: “Once again the whole world will lie at my feet…” Wait, but where are the legs? No legs, which means that the ritual was not completed. The demon needed to find a heroic body to inhabit.
To do this, Thoth-Amon decided to trap some of Highborea’s best heroes and set up a “Razromaton” tournament, where you have to go through several regions in succession, proudly alone or in the company of four players, and kill a bunch of strong enemies, including bosses.
Actually, that’s almost the end of the local humor. Yes, you can run with the hen, shoot again with chicken eggs from which with a certain chance another hen will hatch, well, in general, one can feel the ironic atmosphere. But no more than that.
Not cool classes.
As a “bagel” Conan Chop Chop does not offer anything fundamentally new. Moreover, claims can and should be made to it. For example, it lacks more interesting, unique classes. In addition to Conan, there are two other warriors, Valeria and Pallantis, and the archer Belit. Each differs in skills, but in fact, all are about the same cold-weapon and archery, all have the equivalent of a jerk – Conan, as a true barbarian, jumps on enemies and stuns them, and Pallantid rushes forward and stuns opponents with a blow of the shield.
There are also ultimative attacks, mostly in the area – Conan saves up rage and releases it, Pallantid roars and stuns everyone around him, dealing gradually increasing damage, Valeria spins around with her sword like a spinner, and Belit releases a cloud of arrows. That is, in general, all monotonous, and its style is probably the only difference Conan and Belit, but the archer “ulta” is inconvenient to use.
Finally, as we pass, we learn new abilities for each character, which are retained in all subsequent sorties. But even there are few unique things, and most of them are standard health bonuses, extra boxes for amulets, the ability to start the game with a bonus supply of gold or with a piece of healing ham. That’s not to say that all four heroes are identical, but I’d like more uniqueness and variety.
Amulets of salvation
I’m also perplexed by the words about the “magical generation of the world” – they say it makes every playthrough unique. Maybe I certainly did not understand or notice something, but in fact here is a rare for “rogaliks” situation where after a few walkthroughs you literally by heart and learn the order of 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 characters and what is the main success of the game is a bunch of different equipment, which we find in the chests, buy for the collected gold or order from the village blacksmith for a much rarer steel.
With all the shields, swords, maces and armor it’s more or less clear. They differ in attack/defense parameters, as well as giving additional bonuses calculated as percentages – for example, there’s a sword with the feature “Dart for 5.5 seconds increases the chance of critical damage by 37%” and a bow, fired from which arrows with a 33% chance “leave a random elemental trace”.
This may not sound like much, but the Conan Chop Chop is good for combining the effects of items, increasing all those percentages and bonuses. As soon as I put the aforementioned sword with the jerk effect on Conan, which increases the chance of critical damage, and the amulet that multiplies the jerk counter, the boss was defeated by himself, and quite easily.
Of particular interest are the amulets that change the rules or give additional features – there is the already mentioned shooting not arrows but eggs, bombs or even sand, summoning a chicken or slug as permanent helpers, adding poison to melee attacks, chance to increase in size after killing an enemy (damage also increases) and so on. Nothing particularly new, but it still works great and adds uniqueness to every run.
Yes, the RPG of Conan Chop Chop turned out ambiguous – I have not yet said about the technical flaws (eg, bugs) at the release. But all the same, the project deserves attention by a variety if not classes, equipment and given them the effects / features. Especially if you play in co-op, where all the possible shortcomings are compensated by the lack of fun in cooperative mode.
Pros: ironic style and atmosphere; addictive gameplay with the ability to combine the effects of different pieces of equipment; cheerful co-op; stylish visuals.
Cons: few really interesting classes; random generation works mostly only for drop-down items; technical problems, including bugs.