You have my bow, and my axe, and my ungodly amount of AOE Damage!
With Thunder Lotus Games new PVE action roguelike 33 Immortals releasing into early access a brave team of Gamer Social Club members took up their weapons and challenged the gods.
How many Immortals?
Let’s set the tone, I have never played WOW, but I did put a few hours into Elder Scrolls Online and 33 Immortals reminds me of a public dungeon or raid.
You spawn into the dungeon with 32 other damned souls, and you must fight your way through hordes of enemies to eventually face the dungeon boss. The catch, if you die, that’s it.
The first thing we all commented on was the Dante’s Inferno setting. It was a perfect match to the visuals. The use of Dark Greys, Reds and Black as the main background colors with contrasting splashes of bright Blues and Yellows for the characters was stunning.
Before we get started, I will say that all four of us had a lot of fun with 33 Immortals and were gutted when our time slot ended. The next day we continued and continue to talk about how we wanted to play more and couldn’t wait for the full release. However, in its current state we worry that 33 Immortals will miss its mark.
Getting Started
Upon loading into your first run of 33 Immortals you are thrown into the tutorial. If that’s what you can call it. You are shown the basics of combat and then taught how to die. However there are a few important mechanics that are brushed over leading to a frustrating learning curve. For example, you start with a teleportation stone which is used to jump to a team-mate if you get separated, or when you reach the final step in summoning the boss. There is a Warzone style shrinking zone that you must make inside the safe area or its death. This is information that would be useful to new players
The Numbers Don’t Work
We went into our first match as a team of 4 which is when we ran into our first problem. We had teamed up using the squad code system. When our leader started our quest through the Eternal Gate we were split up, and some of us went into the game and the others stayed. We realized that if you don’t accept then it just takes the ones that did. It’s a little inconvenient but it became a common theme with our squad.
When you start your adventure, you randomly spawn on the map. There are ‘mini dungeons’ called Torture Chambers spread around the map that must be cleared. However, each torture chamber has a maximum of 6 at a time. With teams maxing out at 4 this lead to us requiring us to find 2 random players that are not in our squad to maximize our potential success. But, it’s first in first served. If 3 or 4 players enter the torture chamber before you, your team is split up again. So, it made us wary of entering areas incase we were split up, as going on alone leads to certain death.
Even with full teams of 6, I’m not sure where 33 comes into play. That still leads to odd numbers of players.
Combat of the Gods
There are 4 archetypes to choose from. Melee, ranged, support and tank. Each archetype has different weapons and move sets. The combat is fast and fluid with a mixture of dashes and attacks for the melee characters. The ranged characters work a little different with an “ammo” count. Attack is “X” then once you run out you press “Y” to reload. It stops you from just peppering enemies and makes it a little more tactical.
There is a neat co-op moves that must be charged and upon activation does some devastating damage or activate a buff. This is where the combat frustration comes in. It seems that almost every enemy has an area of effect attack that spawns a massive pool of fire that lasts for a long time. With a dodge cooldown you seem to be dodging from one pool of fire to take damage in another. This is doubled if you are a melee character. The pools of fire stop you from attacking so you are just running around trying not to take damage.
Once you finally clear a torture chamber you are rewarded with your roguelike element in the form of a relic. These can increase critical damage or health or gives you extra dodges, all sorts of fun stuff.
Death
Now for the downside of any roguelike, Death. With 33 Immortals on the field how can we lose! There is a counter in the top right corner with the number of remaining Damned Souls. Its actually wild watching that drop from 33 to 27 to 20 in the blink of an eye, as the run goes on your chances dwindle with each death.
You can be resurrected, once. But you are bought back to life with a reduction in your max health which is equal to a couple of hits. Once you are dead, dead you just must watch your team mates aimlessly fight until their demise. You can be revived again at a shrine, but only to your reduced health.
Currencies of the Dead
Like all roguelikes, there are a bunch of currencies that can be earned to upgrade your weapons and perks between each run. There is one resource that doesn’t make sense though. Stardust can be used during a run to remove your decreased health bar on death. But it doesn’t seem worth it because you earn so little each run and its also used for cosmetics. So don’t go spending everything all at once.
Fantastic Rougelike and well worth a try
It seems like I have had a lot of negative things to say, but these are all small things that can be tweaked. Like I said at the start. We had a blast with 33 Immortals, and all four of us will be playing once the early access is in full swing.
33 Immortals will be entering early access on both PC and Xbox Gamepass on the 18th of March and we at the Gamer Social Club would like to thank Thunder Lotus Games for the opportunity to try and take down a god.
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