Translated by
Microsoft from French
Microsoft from French
Product received for free Midboss is a mix of Dungeon crawler and rogue with the elements associated with it today, namely Dungeon generation and permanent death. The player directs a particularly weak IMP who will try to improve thanks to his power: take control of his defeated opponents to gain their abilities.
In-game, it's moving case by dynamic box. Attacking or moving count for an action and our opponents also spend their action at the same time as us according to a speed-dependent order of precedence. The main mechanics are to be able to take the body of the enemy that we will defeat, starting with a simple rat, and up to more imposing and powerful creatures.
Transformed, our character will gain a lot of active and passive abilities of the creature. From there, two types of experience come into play: the experience of the IMP with a fairly simple statistics system on 4 themes, and the experience of the monster that one controls, which can be seen as a mastery. The more enemies we kill with the possessed creature, the more abilities will be unlocked. For example, the vampire bat can offer vampirism, a remote attack or a passive Dodge.
This way we can make his market on the monsters by linking the transformations. Switching from Monster to IMP and vice versa is one of the main ways to recover from life, so it will be important to often control a creature. In the form of a diablotin, one can then "equip" the powers of a creature controlled in the past. At the beginning of the game for example, we will have the abilities of diablotin, those of rats and those of the bat simultaneously allowing to continue to use the powers of the besitoles previously encountered.
So in the course of the game, we will "farmer" the creatures that interest us to have abilities and to improve overall our level. To get out, we will collect in a classic way weapons/protections that we can equip to better fit with a system of usual rarity (common, rare...).
The last point is that death is permanent and loses everything related to the experience of the IMP or monsters. On the other hand, a death card will keep the equipment that we had in the game as a kind of Pantheon. This will allow us during a new game to take one and only one object/equipment associated with the card. For example, we can recover the Super sword from the part associated with the map to help restart. And if several dead cards are stored (you don't have to consume it at the beginning of the game), you can recover several devices to make a "big" attempt to progress in the dungeons. It's pretty neat but obviously each card can only be used once.
I liked the concept of Midboss for the 2 hours I played (for lack of time). The customization of skills is pretty neat and renews the parties a lot and one takes the habit of owning the monsters that we want to try to hold as long as possible. Equipment with no pre-requisites, being able to ship those of the previous parts is really handy and allows to approach the attempts otherwise. The game is not necessarily simple and the monsters can sometimes hurt us enough if we aggro them without completing them because they chase us after.
I had a good time on the game, to see if over time it does not become a little too repetitive because we start again.
I made a video presentation of the game, if ever: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2YmjMpVUoB4