Feedback on Shadow Lords Beta

Shadow Lords
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Wanted to say a quick “thank you” before I started giving some feedback. I think this is a pretty unique mode, with a lot of potential. I’m sure we’ll see some different variations on this in other fighting games trying to do more than just a “simple story”. Without further adieu:

  • “Beginner” tutorial on your first play-through

    • I can understand why this was put into place. Anyone that’s never played KI before, but wanted to play Shadow Lords, would need to understand basic mechanics to enjoy the game. That being said, I think that if you’ve gone through qualifiers in Ranked mode, you probably don’t need to know how to throw a crouching medium kick :slight_smile: This could be as simple as checking for any non-Qualifier, or for people that have reset, maybe whether or not they have more than 3-4 level 20 characters (or something like that)

  • “Ultra” combo tutorial

    • Minor nit-pick here, but there should also be a note on how to actually end your Ultra early. I know when I first played, I would let the entire Ultra rock just because I didn’t know how to end it early. Could save some people grief from people thinking they’re doing it on purpose

  • Combo assist enabled

    • I can understand enabling combo assist during the “beginner” tutorial, but either revert back to what the person already has on their account, or at least give us the option to disable after the tutorial. I know I got caught with it left on when I went to modes outside of Shadow Lords and it burned me

  • Breaking crates after a mission

    • I might be in the minority here, but I’m not really a fan of the game pausing until I break a crate. Especially when there is seemingly no difference on when I actually break it, and there is another pause once I receive the items anyway. Either remove the requirement (you could still leave the animations of it opening if you want), or maybe give us an extra bonus if we break it within a certain period

  • Item drops after a mission

    • It would be cool if I could scroll over all the different items I got after a mission to get some details on what those items are actually for. As it stands, I would have to remember what each of those do after I’ve already gone into the Emporium once to read the description

  • Match results after the mission is completed

    • Another minor nit-pick, but I don’t see the point of showing me that I defeated everyone, have the game pause, and THEN have some dialogue between characters. If I’m going to see dialogue, just take me straight there without an extra button press. Or, if there’s no dialogue, just bring me back to the map

  • Deploying non-available characters

    • When I select a mission and the characters I want to send on that mission, don’t let me attempt to send someone that has already taken their “turn”. Just seems like extra buttons/movement that I don’t need to do since I don’t have an option anyway

  • Battle details before going in to the mission

    • When we’re on the screen showing who I deployed and the enemies I’m facing, let us scroll through the different power-ups they have so I can see what I’m up against. This goes back to the “item issue” I talked about before. I know there’s a popup that happens the first time I fight an enemy with a specific power-up, but having to remember what those do with every mission might be confusing

  • Scrolling between items that I got from a pack instead of pressing ‘A’

    • Minor nit-pick, but why would we scroll through items with the stick instead of pressing ‘A’. This seems like a minor inconsistency where on other parts we press ‘A’ to continue

  • Combo breaking with the RAM guardian

    • This may be a balance issue, but if I did the correct strength for my combo breaker and have the RAM guardian equipped, I shouldn’t lose a charge. My understanding is that it’s supposed to give me an advantage because I can do first frame breakers on something and always get it right. I shouldn’t be punished for doing the right thing

This is my general feedback after my first hour of game-play. If anything else comes up, I’ll reply to my own post. Thanks again for the early access, and good luck with the launch!

3 Likes
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I agree with a lot of what you have said but I think they have listened to the chest comment as when I played last you could perform a combo and were rewarded based on the size of the combo with better loot. Which I think works pretty well.

Your comments about combo assist and tutorial mode are spot on though. Please fix this guys because it’s not cool to have to start a brand new game just to reset settings.

This mode is pretty awesome though and I can’t wait for the finished product!!

1 Like
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Thanks for the tip on the chests. I think I may have quickly skipped over the tooltip on them, since I had watched the stream. If there wasn’t anything about this in the tooltip, it should maybe be included. Although, having a hidden/fun mechanic is kinda cool too

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Replying to my own post so it’s a little easier to follow the thread. I got to play a little more last night, and have a few more bits of feedback:

  • Auto-ending a turn after all fighters are deployed

    • I don’t think your turn should automatically complete after you’ve done as many missions as you can for the day. Although I can see that it would prevent someone from activating something like a damage artifact and effectively “wasting” it, it also kept me from using the artifact that gave my characters a little bit of healing at the end

  • “Days” are slightly confusing

    • I know this was touched on a little during the stream, but the concept of “days” can be a little bit confusing. When I saw some of the artifacts gave me power boosts for “2 days”, my initial reaction was that I would be “wasting” it since I wouldn’t be back in a few days. Might be easier for newer people to either call it “turns”, or maybe just make artifacts last a certain amount of missions

  • Skeleton Keys

    • I understand why these exist, but I don’t like how you currently acquire them. From what I can tell, the only way to get a skeleton key is to be “lucky” enough to get it from a pack. I haven’t run into a special chest yet (outside of the “tutorial” freebie), but I am already getting a little frustrated that the next time I DO see one, I have no way of opening it. My suggestion here is either let us buy it with KI gold only, or a combination of barracks items and astral gems. Just give us a guaranteed way of obtaining these keys, but still go and put some sort of “premium” on them. I know there’s probably some sort of stigma with having real money “keys” unlocking “crates”, but other games seem to be able to get away with it without TOO much backlash. Especially since you still get items for “free” anyway
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Skeleton keys are also epic drops at the end of missions, so it’s not just from packs. And I believe the skeleton chests are a “random encounter” type thing, so predicting or planning for them is difficult.

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I agree with the list you put together. I would like to see better drop rates for guardians in the final version. Having to buy packs for reliable guardian drops is a little iratating.

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Haven’t played long enough for a random skeleton key drop, so glad to hear that’s at least an option. I think if the drop rates for either of those are tuned right, then not having a consistent way to get a skeleton key could be ok. Hiding anything behind pure chance can be a little demoralizing though

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I can see where they’re going with that though. If the drop rates for guardians were TOO good, there wouldn’t be any incentive on buying packs. To me, for anything structured around drops/packs, the trade off is going to be how much you tolerate the “irritation” before you just use KI Gold

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I don’t have any problem buying packs with the in game money. If you use the right setup, you can farm Gargos for the gems you need or want. Just skip days until he shows up then win. Repeat.

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One thing I want to give feedback on is about Consumables:
I think consumables should be activated differently. As it is now it’s the same command as a combo breaker. I can’t tell you how many times i go for a combo breaker in-game, miss it, and instead activate my consumable by accident smh. It’s so frustrating. Because of that I avoid using them all-together. Anyone else feel this way?

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I agree with most of the feedback comments you guys left here. Let me share my thoughts.

The hand holding intro tutorial is boring from a gameplay stand point. Most of us have already played some sort of fighting game prior to KI.

I know teaching people new to the game how to play is important, I just feel this kind of lengthy mode should be forced on people playing in begginer mode. Give us the option to skip this mode all together. Also, being forced into a jago team and then later saying you can start a new game with new characters kinda breaks the flow. With that being said, we should be able to pick our teams at the beginning of the game and then go through that jago team vs. Gargos scenario.

I really have been enjoying this new mode after restarting with my own team (Orchid, Spinal, Mira). I love that Kan-ra works the emporium, his voice clips are great!

Crafting is a wonderful element in this mode, which makes running around the world fighting things; a lot more rewarding.

Mimics have nice visual effects and usually have interesting things to say. Which brings me to my next point…

Pressing the A button multiple times before I can start doing something is very annoying. I agree with everyone else that pressing A 2-5 after or before the next match slows the flow of this game even more. I hope this can be changed at some point.

Chests at the end of the match… Its cool i guess. I like the combo chests the most.

All in all, Shadow lords is a nice unique mode which reminds me of soul caliburs weapon master mode. Good times!