Undecember - A game with an invisible price tag

For the second decade the developers are trying to unravel the success of Diablo - the simplest Hack-and-Slash game, where everyone hated grind occupied 90% of the gameplay. In other games grind caused only rage, frustration, bidding, depression and, finally, acceptance of the fact that in "clon_diablo_name" to forage only four hundred spheres of Horror of the Underworld Oblivion, and the character can pass the Hellfire on level fourteen difficulty!

As the years went by. Diablo was tossed back and forth between grotesque stories and cartoonish medleys and back to dystopian dungeons. You'd think the only place that could compete with Diablo was Path of Exile, because POE's developers had been through Diablo II, and they seemed to have a better sense of the genre. Path of Exile, however, despite all its advantages and claims to be a leader in the Action-RPG genre, had one, but very significant drawback - Path of Exile was not a friendly game, where all the mechanics were chewed up and carefully spoon-fed to the player. Already on the first difficulty level Path of Exile almost forced himself to respect: to penetrate, learn, plan ahead to pump, read hundreds of guides, etc. Casuals POE immediately made it clear that they are in the wrong place...

...And what if the methodical zaklekivanie and hacking thousands of monsters brings pleasure, but pore over guides, as if they were textbooks, not too tempting. Undecember is an attempt to sit on two chairs. And how did it turn out?

On the same chair...

Undecember positions itself as a multiplatform Diablo clone where your gameplay progress is not tied to any platform: you want to play on PC, get bored or go on the road - continue playing from the same place with the same character on iOS or Android. Unlike Diablo: Immortal, Undecember was originally created for PC, not for mobile devices. This fact is important, because if it were the other way around, players would get a raw PC port with a straight emulator with crooked controls and monstrous resolution for widescreen monitors. Fortunately, Undecember is devoid of this disease - that's the game's first biggest plus.

Secondly, looking back at the Path of Exile experience, Undecember manages to achieve the right balance between in-depth mechanics and accessibility for newcomers. Just like in POE, there are no classes here with mandatory ability-based binding. The archetypes of "strongman", "agile" and "clever" did not disappear. However, the classes are not burdened with a rigid framework. At any moment, you can change your mind and design your character the way you want. The local equivalent of abilities - runes - is responsible for the gameplay core.

There was something similar in Path of Exile. Only there for the abilities were responsible for the sockets in things, in Undecember and this is not tied - you know what to put skills on the quick access panel. Worn things protect, synergize with skills, and in some cases act as the basis for the build.

The system with runes gives even more variety than the ability stones, but the principle is the same. If in Path of Exile you had to pick up the item with green nest and color synergy to make it work, Undecember makes you free from this necessity - take any skill, "taste" it, and then decide if you can make something interesting out of it. You need dozens of different resources to pump up skills, but that's a "different chair" story...

In the prologue of Undecember, we are given to play on three basic archetypes: the strongman, the dodger, and the wizard. Soon the control over the killing machine is taken away from us, but to spur interest in the final final build the developers succeed. Already at the beginning of the game you can make a plan. However, those three archetypes don't even accommodate half of those "dream character" options. The exaggerated archetypes only give an indirect understanding of what the game may look like over time. You'll learn about builds on totems, on turrets, or a lazy build on summoning creatures later. But runes aren't the only ones that are rich.

The tree of passive skills is also borrowed from Path of Exile, but Undecember in this respect is much more loyal to the player: if in PoE to make a mistake in the development of passive skills and start to develop something that later we will not use was fraught with useless characteristics or large losses in in-game currency, then Undecember in this respect is much more intuitive.

But if a review on a particular project glimpses so many analogies with another project, isn't Undecember a common travesty? The answer is yes. Undecember is a combination of ideas that have passed the test of time, but without any fantasy and new interpretations. People love Diablo and Path of Exile for a reason: they go to the first game for the atmosphere or paying attention to the old habit, to the second one they go for the build builder and hardcore.

In Undecember the build build is there and its role is huge. I say more, the battles themselves in the game are much less than the resource management and character calibration. And when it comes to loyalty of the game's economy to players, Undecember is much worse than even the notorious Diablo: Immortal...

And on the other chair...

...because Diablo: Immortal doesn't even try to seem like a people's game: once you get the hang of it, it'll pick your pocket right away. Undecember was not created by newcomers. Some of the developers were working on Lineage: Revolution, so the horror was created not spontaneously, but manually.

Undecember is a conditionally free South Korean Action-RPG, which absorbed all the worst from its niche, all the stereotypes were true. For example, the developers of the game - Needs Games - do not hesitate to take the basic necessities from the players and sell them in the in-game store under the guise of premium: pets with a monthly fee are responsible for auto-selection, the game chest is extremely small initially, and its expansion to a relatively acceptable size will cost $10... In Undecember the sum of $10 is a meme, almost everything in the game costs $10.

The Koreans are monetization geniuses, they even managed to monetize identity scrolls and crafting. Donate is divided into: combat passes, which put the player simple tasks, and in return the player receives items and resources; cosmetics - cosmetic donate affects only the appearance; "simplifying life" donate - a variety of experience boosters and gold; air sale - various diamonds, platinum, rubies, pearls - everything that can be called premium currency and sold; Pay-to-Win donate - bought an item and you win; and loot boxes - legalized casino in a video game. All of these elements are present in Undecember...

To play Undecember comfortably, you need to pour $200-250 into the game - that's for expanding the meager chest, for auto-selecting items and somewhat accelerated crafting.

$250 is the price you'll pay not for domination, but only for comfort. However, after paying this amount, you might as well stop. In Diablo: Immortal, it was the game itself that forced you to donate on a regular basis - the competition in PvP, the build of the current most powerful build. Undecember has no PvP, no competition, and the meta doesn't dictate such strict timelines; however, that doesn't mean you can ignore donation by accepting the fact that you simply swing slower. Needs Games will put a stick in your wheel more than once.

For example, you need resources to pump runes, which changes how runes synergize with each other. "Calibrating" a rune doesn't happen for a certain amount of money, it all comes down to randomness. It can take months of tight play to properly sharpen a legendary rune alone. But don't despair, Needs Games will gladly help you...

...Not for free, of course.

The monetization of Undecember is akin to all free smartphone games, no miracle happened. If you are ready to put up with this, Undecember will instead offer you only a casual Path of Exile with corridor-like, cramped locations, but with exciting, multi-phase battles with bosses; with variable leveling, but without the possibility to make a bloody mess on the map and total genocide of monsters, because the vast majority of smartphones will not hold it; Undecember offers a nice picture, but does not bother to elaborate physics and open world, even if it would not be seamless. So with everything else, everything in Undecember is second-rate, even if tastefully done.

Verdict

Undecember is free, but conditionally free. The invisible price tag is drawn after you get to know the game - $250. It's quite fair to say that the price tag is overpriced, but if you are not squeamish about pouring money into the game provided that you like the game - Undecember is able to kill a lot of your time not without fun.

But I wouldn't advise you to pay for air. Respect yourself and completely ignore the existence of such projects.