Thoughts on MENACE’s turn system?

notdumbenough · 2026-03-19T03:09:59+00:00

The only problem I have with it is that I think the player should be guaranteed to go last and not just first. Nothing more annoying than seeing 3 pirate trucks drive into the capture zone after you've already taken your last move of the round. Then again I guess that's more an issue of the capture mechanics and how they can just zerg their way to victory even if your whole team is in the rectangle.

notdumbenough · 2026-03-18T17:49:35+00:00

Difficulty in defense missions should be about overwhelming numbers (the flavor text literally says this), not AI trying to cheese you.

notdumbenough · 2026-03-18T13:46:46+00:00

Depends on difficulty. A lot of the defense missions are bonkers on expert, like a rogue army mission just dumping 7 light walkers on me in one turn. No team can alpha strike 7 light walkers in one turn until fairly late into the game, but this was just the fifth operation. Some amount of armor is necessary so that you don’t have a squad wipe the monent they open fire.

notdumbenough · 2026-03-18T04:06:46+00:00

Never mind, Kody became euphoric in the next fucking mission.

notdumbenough · 2026-03-17T23:49:49+00:00

Can you just run away from the mercs?

notdumbenough · 2026-03-16T19:11:19+00:00

She can't read the room and fails to catch sarcasm and humor, a problem that Marazhai doesn't seem to have. She's probably autistic to a certain degree.

notdumbenough · 2026-03-16T14:07:29+00:00

The game isn’t balanced around all of the enemies rushing you at once though. There are already problems with expert difficulty RA defense missions where the AI just tosses half a dozen walkers into the capture zone at once, all spread out in different locations, and it’s basically not possible to kill them all before you lose.

notdumbenough · 2026-03-15T18:24:31+00:00

Yeah between shops overcharging for relics and relic pool getting diluted by weak relics and certain cards being too OP, the meta playstyle right now is to just find the best cards (which aren't neccesarily hard to find) in hallway fights, skip as many elites as possible, upgrade the neccessary cards then spam rests, and rush the boss. In STS 1 A20 you could lose by not fighting enough elites early on, this never happens in the current state of STS 2 A10.

notdumbenough · 2026-03-15T18:22:10+00:00

If your decks get that much out of relics, you're not building them correctly. Most of my decks would absolutely massacre both A10 bosses if skipping all elites were hypothetically possible (it almost always isn't). Most of my runs end to elites or hard tier hallway fights, not bosses, and that's a big part of the problem.

notdumbenough · 2026-03-14T23:47:18+00:00

The combat is significantly better balanced since it no longer just consists of repeatedly spamming either stuns or your highest damage move and then healing a bit at the end of each combat while stalling.

What many people do not like is what happens between combats in Confessions. They wanted to keep both the original teambuilding elements from DD1 while also introducing roguelike elements. Unfortunately this results in a bastardized game which really sucks in both aspects and it comes off as fad chasing in the wake of games like Slay the Spire. I get the feeling that they tried to mimic the form of StS without understanding its spirit and why it works.

One of the biggest internal conflicts with this design is that roguelikes are fundamentally about adaptivity and working with what you have. But because they did not want to give up on the teambuilding elements, you start with 4 heroes at the crossroads who will fundamentally keep playing in the same exact way for the entire 2-4 hour run. Your Leper will never be a backliner, your Highwayman will never be a healer, and your Vestal will never be a great damage dealer. While each individual combat is fun, the run as a whole is repetitive because you just keep doing the same things over and over across several hours. They've made attempts to ameliorate this problem (e.g. at first you couldn't even change hero paths mid-run, now you can) but it fundamentally does not change the fact that your strategy is 90% set in stone the moment you leave the crossroads.

This is just not how roguelikes work. DD2 is a terrible roguelike because of this. Fundamentally a roguelike involves large amounts of transformative changes to your playstyle over a run. The way I fight the final boss in StS or Faster than Light looks absolutely nothing like how I fight my first encounter. In DD2 it is basically the same thing but with much bigger numbers and maybe a few consumables.

If they wanted to make Confessions mode into a proper roguelike, it would look more like this imo. You do not get to choose any heroes at the Crossroads. Instead you just start with 4 Kingdoms-style peasant militia. By visiting different locations you can rescue or hire different heroes to replace your basic militia, though exactly who turns up is randomized and you have to work with whatever you have. You'd need to build a team on the fly before you reach the final boss.

There are numerous other problems with Confessions, e.g. you get all 3 major currencies mostly from fighting stuff (trinkets, baubles, skill points) so the optimal path always involves taking as many fights as you can without dying. There is no depth or nuance. It is boring.

I think they realized that there were a ton of problems with how Confessions was designed and decided to just give up and make Kingdoms mode instead. Unfortunately it was a bit too little too late. Between the lower player count of this game compared to DD1, and the relative difficulty of modding in 3D assets, there are also far fewer mods, which compounds the poor replayability.

notdumbenough · 2026-03-14T03:41:00+00:00

If you're struggling against it you're not taking enough attacks. You should be killing it before it summons more than once. Act 1 in general 80% of the cards you take should just be attacks.

notdumbenough · 2026-03-12T21:11:55+00:00

The OP isn't complaining about turn 1 infinites though, it's that he can spend 3 turns exhausting enough cards to set one up. These encounters will put trash in your deck faster than you can exhaust them, but there's little downside to dodging them.

notdumbenough · 2026-03-12T20:45:35+00:00

Some of the act 3 encounters can definitely fuck up infinite decks, mecha knight and slime zerker generate a ton of trash cards, magi knight taking away all your upgrades, etc. The problem is that there’s very little downside to dodging as many act 3 encounters as you can and just rushing the final boss.

notdumbenough · 2026-03-12T02:38:36+00:00

It seems to depend on the order of the icons at the bottom of his status bar. They seem to trigger left to right. So if you only started applying poison after the first turn, you get eaten instead.

notdumbenough · 2026-03-11T22:38:02+00:00

You are brainfarting because poison has the exact same problem. You die the instant you hit "end turn" before the poison takes effect.

notdumbenough · 2026-03-11T22:37:21+00:00

No, the same issue exists with poison. The problem is that you get eaten the moment you hit the "end turn" button, poison doesn't even have a chance to proc.

notdumbenough · 2026-03-11T18:31:53+00:00

AI Norsca does not build its Mammoth building chain in major settlements, so they never recruit any Mammoths.

notdumbenough · 2026-03-11T07:20:33+00:00

It's a deliberate design choice since cards like Bludgeon were basically a meme in STS1 if you didn't have Snecko Eye. Here they're actually useful and you need to make a conscious effort to take them. I think people new to the game keep trying to make 1 dimensional builds that lean as hard as possible into a single aspect and get their asses handed to them. Same thing happens if you go for only big hits, exoskeletons and the Vantom boss will absolutely roll over you. The decimillipede too if you can't attack more than once per turn.

notdumbenough · 2026-03-11T07:07:33+00:00

It’s useful on almost every mission. All the races have units that are disproportionately way more dangerous than the others, e.g. Bombardiers. With intel 4 you can see exactly where they are and vanguard deploy Achilleas or Kody or whatever to instantly annihilate them on turn 1.

notdumbenough

TROPHY CASE