So I looked at Krater sometimes ago, I think I watched a youtube video of Weem (of Epic Inventor glory) playing the beta. I was not particulary impressed by the part of gameplay he demonstrated, but something in me thought that there might be potential that is just not seen in the video. The idea of hybrid of RTS and RPG (where you have an RPG like team, but controls are RTS - like) was quite appealing to me. Unfortunately they have no demo, so you either buy or pirate if you want to try.
I decided to try the game non the less. And after a bit of play I was, again, left with mixed feeling. The game play seems fine, the graphics if quite appealing for my taste, but there was things that I thought were bizarre. For example, there is a recruitment guy, where you can hire a new team member... But I was surprised to learn that all the chars within a type have exactly the same spells/ abilities. Further, at one point I noticed that my chars stopped gaining XP. When I looked closer, I saw that they are all capped at level 5 (out of 15) and in the starting town you can't recruit anyone without the cap. So when you level your team up to level five and moved to another town you need to re-hire again and start from level 1. But it seems that you also have to go back to the old town to level up because in the new one the challenges will be to steep.
It feels like the developers intentionally makes you re-play the same content to artificially make the game longer... I was a bit confused because I was not sure what it was about. And then I found this review:
http://www.quartertothree.com/fp/2012/06/15/krater-is-a-shallow-dent-in-the-action-rpg-genre/After I've read it I can tell that I agree with almost all points. I'm not likely to play krater again soon and I can only recommend it if there is something you know you will like. If you are not sure, I'd recommend to stay away from it.
