Paladog

Paladog

Paladog is a side view real time defense style strategy game where you summon units to defend Critterland against the forces of evil. You control Paladog as he supports his army with magic as well as using the spoils of war to upgrade his troops as well as unlock new soldiers.

After choosing the difficulty level desired and viewing the story behind the game your dropped into a stage select screen. From here you can go to the upgrade section or start a stage to play the game.

Combat

Choosing to start a stage will drop you into the combat screen. From here you can summon critter units which will come on to screen from the left and move right towards the enemy base. Enemy units will exit the enemy base in an attempt to put an end to your crusade against evil.

Stages come in five different variants. Normal stages are simple, they end when either Paladog or the evil base falls in battle. There are four challenge stages which play differently from the regular stages however.

Critter units require meat to be summoned and magic requires mana to be used, both of which steadily increase over time. Both regeneration rates and max capacity can be enhanced through the use of rings and level up bonuses.

With every enemy unit destroyed Paladog gains both gold which is shown in the upper right and experience which is represented by the green bar in the upper left of the screen. When the bar fills up Paladog levels up and you get to choose from one of three randomly determined bonuses.

 

Bonuses range from an increase in the production of food or mana, to the increase in the drop rate of loot from enemies.

Bonus that have been leveled to their maximum level are removed from the pool of potential random bonuses

The first challenge stage is a kind of lottery draw where random units and spells scroll onto the screen out of the mouth of some creature.

In this challenge all you have to do is survive through a number of waves of enemies. Critter units and spells can be summoned or activated as soon as they appear on screen.

The second challenge stage plays much like the regular combat stages with the exception that you must protect a covered wagon as it makes it's way across the stage.

The stage ends when either the covered wagon is destroyed or it makes it safely across the stage.

The third challenge stage is a lane based defense game where the objective is to get enough of your units through to the other side of the battle field.

Units are summoned normally but magic has been replaced by the ability to either summon one random unit on each lane or five units into a single lane.

Every unit gotten to the opposing side damages the enemy leader, the stage ends when either Paladog or the enemy falls.

The last variant of the combat stages is the boss battle stage. This stage plays out much like a regular combat stage with one major difference. Once the evil base is destroyed the boss appears and must be defeated to win the stage. This is easier said than done as bosses tend to be stronger and more resilient than normal enemies as well as having unique abilities of their own.

Upon completion of a stage your results are graded as one through three stars based on how quickly you finished the stage, you are then given an amount of bonus gold based on the grade which you received.

Upgrades

There are two ways you can use gold to upgrade your capacity to destroy evil. The first is by upgrading your units directly. Each unit can be upgraded a maximum of twenty times counting their initial unlock. Upgrading increases a units ATTACK and HP (with the exception of the turtle which has no offensive capabilities) thus allowing them to do more damage and last longer in a fight.

The Shop

 

The shop is where you can buy a limited variety of maces (magic wand things) and rings (which grant passive boosts to certain aspects of gameplay). This is also where you can sell unwanted items from your inventory. Aside from the item shop equipment can be gained randomly from defeated monsters and there are some maces and rings that can only be gotten from monster drops.

Equipment Screen 

Equipment whether it be purchased or gathered from loot drops must first be equipped before it can be used or have any kind of effect on gameplay. up to three wands and two rings can be equipped at any given time so choose your equipment carefully.

Overview

Paladog is a well executed side view RTS game with unique and original artwork. Though it's translation could have been done better I suppose it's passable. This appears to be the initial offering of FazeCat,  a company based out of Korea (which is mostly why I can give the translation a bit of a pass, English probably isn't their first language). One can only hope their next stab into the world of flash games will be even better.

Paladog

Monster's Den Chronicles

Monster's Den Chronicles

The latest dungeon crawling experience provided by independent game developer Garin-dan once again brings more to the plate than it's predecessors. Chronicles expands on many of the features found in the first two games while trying to delve into new territory.

Features

Turn based combat

Classic Dungeon Crawling

Drag and Drop inventory

Gameplay

Party Creation

The first thing your expected to do is to decide on a party of four from five different classes each with two variants. The following is a list of the character classes and their basic roles.

                                                                                   

Character Classes are limited to the above eight and I find that

aside from differing starting equipment each variant plays much

like the other with only a few minor differences between them. 

All classes have a basic set of skills and fighting styles with 

only a handful of different skills and one unique fighting style 

per variant. This makes the choice between variants a minor 

issue.

Warrior Classes:
Champion: Melee Offense and defense
Captain:  Melee Support

Cleric Classes:
Inquisitor: Offense magic
Confessor: Healing healing

Mage Classes:
Sorcerer: Mostly offensive magic
Conjurer: Summoning magic

Rouge Classes:
Thief: Melee offense and support
Assassin: Melee offensive and DOT

Ranger Classes:

Marksman: Ranged offense primarily

Warden: Ranged offense and buffs

Campaign Selection

There are three campaigns available in The Monster's Den Chronicles. In the first you fight a cult trying to gain unimaginable power, the second you fight the undead and necromancers, I have yet to unlock the third but I assume it's similarly themed. Each campaign has a story but I find them to be a bit on the generic side though that's not to say it detracts from the game itself. Just don't start playing expecting a deep and involved storyline or plot.

Each campaign is relatively short compared to the last two monster's dens but can be replayed as many times as desired. It's here that you can set the difficulty as well as decide on what penalty you want to suffer in the instance of a total part wipe. Available penalties include loss of experience, random items, or having to start the campaign over again.

Dungeon Crawling 

From there you are tossed pretty much into the game. Movement like everything else is handled with the mouse. Click on the room or the part of the hallway to move your party to that point.

More of the map is revealed as you explore, sharp eyed explorers will even be able to find secret rooms if they look hard enough. Mousing over the torch or the bones icons in the upper right will tell you how many more monster encounters or how much unexplored area there is to the level.

The icons in the lower left of the screen open up the following.

Helmet

Lots to be done here if you know what your doing

The character screen is where you level your characters up as well as keep an eye on how close they are to leveling up, as well as actually initiate the level up when it happens. This is also where you can choose the characters default fighting style.

The little gear icon next to the character sprite lets you modify it's appearance from hair/skin color, determining what equipment shows or doesn't, as well as being able to load custom sprites and portraits for your

Bag

The inventory screen is where you manage your inventory and characters equipment. From here you can purchase more inventory space as well as manage inventory filters allowing you to auto loot specific kinds of items to specific bags in order to keep things organized the way you want it.

This along with the shop has seen the most improvement from the previous installment of the game. The addition of extra inventory space allows for the game to move along more smoothly as the player won't have to worry as much about managing their inventory.

Coin

The shop is probably my favorite improvement from the last installment. The ability to call it up when ever you want makes inventory management a breeze by comparison. The ability to increase the amount and quality of the items offered by investing in the category of item also gives players a reason to play campaigns more than once in order to gather the required gold.

All in all probably my favorite change to the game so far.

Laurels

Achievements are gained by performing certain tasks or achieving certain goals. They unlock special orders in the shop, though most items offered are cosmetic in purpose the special orders section of the shop also offers a respec scroll so I feel it's still worth mentioning.

Aside from that I am pretty sure Achievements don't unlock anything else of use. If I discover otherwise however I will update this post.

Gear

Most of the options menu should be self explanatory. This allows you to tinker with the graphics quality, as well as the audio. Combat options let you determine what is shown during combat (floating damage numbers, action clocks, and the like)

The only other feature here worth noting are the saved data options which allow you to reset characters or wipe all saved data. What these do I feel should be fairly obvious.

Combat

Combat occurs either when you run into a group of enemies on the map, or randomly when you cross an Ambush point.

At the beginning of combat you can choose to re-arrange your party on the field in response to the current threat.

After your satisfied with the formation of your party combat takes place in turns determined by the action clocks. Which fill based on the quickness stat of each character.

Skills and spells use power which is represented by a blue bar on the right side of the action clock, health is represented by a red bar o the other side of the clock. Skills and spells are represented at the bottom of the screen. The three icons at the bottom left are the fighting styles (semi-permanent swappable buffs) and to the right of that are your characters skills/spells.

To the far bottom right you have pass turn, retreat, and full retreat. Pass turn passes the characters turn and increases their power regeneration until their next turn. Retreat causes the character to retreat and full retreat causes all characters to retreat.

To the upper right of the combat screen are two icons. The first is the gear which opens the options menu. the second is the inspect mode icon. This effectively pauses combat allowing you to click on any unit in combat in order to view their stats and a bit of flavor text.

Think of it like a free scan spell though I'm not entirely certain it shows anything overly useful.The flavor text for some of the baddies does do something to flesh out the game a bit.

Overview

All in all I find this to be a solid and enjoyable installment to the Monster's Den series of flash games. Though basic gameplay hasn't much changed I feel the improvements are going in the right direction. If you like dungeon crawlers and RPGs then this is a must play game.

I didn't comment on any of the premium content because at this point I have no idea what it brings to the game. At this point I can say that the premium content is not required to enjoy the game though.

Monster's Den Chronicles