I’m wondering what the community thinks of Shadow Lords now that it’s been out for a while and has received its first major update. Are you satisfied with it? Can you see yourself still enjoying it several months from now? What do you think could be done to make it better and more appealing to play?
I really like the idea of Shadow Lords and I enjoy playing it from time to time, but I think playthroughs become too homogenous and vapid after awhile. This could be improved by exploring a lot of untapped potential to the variety, rewards, and surprises this mode could offer. Here’s my opinion on what could be done to improve it and give it more longevity for me:
The guest characters should be included as enemies in some capacity, not just as playable. SL deprives itself of a significant chunk of character variety that’s already there by not having missions that have you fight Rash or RAAM.
It would be a pretty cool to have secret or alternate final bosses that you can fight at the end after/instead of Gargos, by meeting certain conditions or making certain choices.
There should be some alternate input for using consumables. It’s feels pretty clunky to use them by having to take my hands off the stick or buttons.
SL could benefit greatly from new stages, which would add more visual variety to the experience.
There should be more reward for successfully completing a playthrough, rather than just the Shadow Lord item. I think there should be some currency cashout after you get to the ending, based on your final score.
Quests could stand to offer more unique rewards, especially to the overall game. How cool would it be if there was a long chain of quests to unlock a color or accessory?
I also have several frustrations with the Shadow Lords MP specifically:
Having to go to the character-select screen every time a match ends is annoying. I’d like some way to get around this inconvenience if players just want to go again with the same equipment.
Using resources in the MP is a waste, especially outside of the daily rewards that require winning. I think either the MP shouldn’t consume resources at all, or there should be some kind of reward system for winning (separate from the dailies).
I honestly find many of the Guardians more annoying than fun in Shadow Lords MP. Like the higher-tier Ram for example, because it gives a player a ton of free breakers right off the bat (which recharge, no less) that usually forces a tedious counter-breaker mindgame for the opponent every time he confirms.
I also find many of the consumables annoying to deal with, like the ones that grant unblockable attacks, given how long they last.
I think it’s broken, because I can’t play it - like, at all. Every time I start it up since the last update, it crashes the entire game. I have yet to hear about that getting fixed, so until I do, I don’t see the point in trying to go back.
I agree with everything here with the exception of the button command for consumables. Leave that where it is, I just strategically trigger the consumable typically at the start of the second round or when I really need it in the middle of a butt pummel I’ll trigger it so I can go straight into retaliation.
I’m Loving SL right now and am liking that they can continue to add newer things to it. It’s also a great way to level up characters to lvl50, the only problem I find with it is the missed opportunity to give the enemies some variety like making Mira with her hood accessories as cultist member or retro eyedol as one gargos higher level troops instead here is mimic jago for the hundredth time.
I love how play throughs are so easy to loop. As soon as I finish with one campaign I roll into another. One thing I don’t like is your team can only be 3 guys and you can only use each character once per turn. So when a turn comes up with 4 or more missions in it, you have to choose which will be skipped, thereby limiting your ability to max out points, xp, resources, and rewards not having enough guys to do all the missions. If there is a completionist achievement this problem makes sure no one is allowed to get it.
I played it a little bit when it released, but that’s it. Seems to bore me quick just by design, but I hope a lot of other people actually enjoy it and are active in it.
The ‘activating a character waiting out a turn’ thing is odd
My first time getting to Eyedol it crashed and at turn 20 something just decided to have me lose the game-
Other than that I like that I can take a customized character in and fight
And I’d like somehwhere for all the do to go since my characters mostly used are level 50
I want feeding a guardian streamlined. If I have run out of pips I should be able to feed the guardian with available astral energy rather than having to exit and complete that most odd engagement of plopping slots with energy it slows down my game
I’d love to have music choice integrated into the game and a chance to skip the dialogues in between matches
Minor things but I am on day 54 of shadow lords. Love it
I liked that it’s helping me level up my other guys, maybe my riptor can have some company up at level 50. It would be even better if the earn ki gold for xp past level 50 becomes a thing.
Dang it I can’t find the other thread to link it here, either that or I don’t know how to link another thread because I’m a doof.
The new additions and extra quests such as the Kan-Ra multi-quest and shadow rogues are really interesting and I’m looking forward to see if the new update adds more of that.
I agree with the multiplayer points. SL MP with items was a nice diversion at first but I gravitated away from the mode, at first not using items or guardians anymore to try and conserve what items and energy I have left, hoping my opponents would do the same, only for everyone I face using max-level guardians and rare items.
At least transmuting duplicate pulled guardians provides a nice supply of astral energy and gems, so I can avoid SL multiplayer mode altogether now.
I’ll be honest, I keep forgetting the Shadow Lords even has multiplayer. I’ve never actually played it, and every time I try I never find an opponent. I’ve thrown around the idea of optional Invasions ala Dark Souls to make the multiplayer more involved with the main dish, but I’m not sure how that’d be handled/received.
As far as what I think of the mode? It’s pretty fun once you get in the groove. I even figured out how to grind it efficiently enough to grab all the pre-patch mimic skins (until I was locked out of the lower difficulties and stuck on Godlike until they fix the crashing issue, which has kept me from even trying to get Eyedol’s mimic skin). But after your first few rodeos the excitement of “I’m gonna save the world!” starts to wear off and it became entirely unlock oriented for me. “Gonna get all them stinky skins! Wonder how long it’ll take to grab all the file entries? I’m gonna collect all the Perfect Killer Guardians!” etc.
And I definitely agree that beating Gargos should have a higher reward, especially on higher difficulties. When the reward for beating the final boss is equivalent to doing a couple of regular fights, it doesn’t feel super rewarding.
One of the features that I do like more than a lot of people seem to is deploying. Helps speed things up, and gives me the feel of being a general or commander overseeing the actions of my minions. Kinda badass
Edit: Oh, one more complaint:
This mode really suffers from the lack of stages. Hard to feel like you’re on a globetrotting adventure if you see the same place 3 times…
As someone who plays casually on single player modes and who loves KI for the lore and characters, Shadow Lords is the ideal mode for me. I get that it’s not for everyone, especially the competitive players, but I think it was lovely of IG to make a mode like this for us casuals. Plus I can tell how much fun they had making it, they themselves are KI nerds like me who love building on the lore, and that really shows here. No exaggeration here, Shadow Lords is my very favorite game and I think it will be for a very, very long time.
Cough cough Riptor’s stage. That stage is so bad yet I see it more times than others. Why is that? I see that stage more than I see Jago’s stage. We need some generic stages. I understand that each stage represents a character. It doesn’t flow into Shadow Lords that well however. For an abanonded building in New York, Aria’s stage doesn’t really work.
I think the most annoying on:neutral_face:e for me (apart from Riptor’s stage being seemingly everywhere) is Glacius’s stage being used in Patagonia. Believe it or not, South America and The South Pole are not the same thing. Shocking, I know.
The only one that makes any sense that it’d be reused so much is Fulgore’s stage. Great big Ultratech industrial complex? Yeah, I can see an entity that’s identified as a Mega-Corporation having more than one factory.
Perfect timing for this thread. i recently started playing again after a months long hiatus. For me the biggest benefit of the mode is the way it encourages you to play with different characters. After that it’s actually a sharp decline, SL gargos is straight out of Mugen or some other homebrew game, imnot interested in buffs or guardians at all.
As for guardians, they’re all ok except exemplar. I can’t use it effectively at all, even when they enemy is using multi hit moves where i block the first few hits. On the flip side watcher is great for turtles like mr against jerks like Omen, and everyone loves Snake and Ram.
As other have said , ram is annoying af in multiplayer, though i did not know it could be counter broken, so i may have to give that a shot
