'ello, 'ello! It's been a while since my last A-Z of Steam Library Gaming, but I'm here now with yet another game that's been lurking in my library for several eons never to grace the light of being installed upon my harddrive!
◾️◻️◾️A Healer Only Lives Twice◾️◻️◾️
According to my Steam History, I picked this game up back in 2016 and was presumably attracted to it by the fact that in this game I get to heal... which just so happens to be my favourite thing to do in MMOs.
My favourite class in WoW is the Holy Priest (DPS - warrior), my favourite in SWTOR is the Sith Sorcerer (DPS - imperial agent), and my favourite in ESO is the Templar (DPS - nightblade)! In Lost Ark I'm playing a Bard, which is a support so basically the same. xD
A Healer Only Lives Twice's blurb on their Steam Store page is as such:
Monsters have cornered you in the dungeon corridors. As a newly hired Priest, your duties are to use your magical abilities to heal your comrade, a Knight on the front-line, and provide support during battle. Will these two brave souls live to see the light of day again?
Sounds intriguing enough!
However, my gaming taste has become a bit pickier over the years and looking at the store page now I wince a little at the lack of quality I see in the screenshots and I doubt I'd even think about grabbing this now.
Yet, I find myself with a distinct lack of 'H' titles in my Steam Library, so let's see what this game brings.
As soon as I open the game, I am greeted by an antiquated control interface. I'm already cringing very hard at what I'm assuming I'm going to be dealing with.
This game doesn't tell you what to do at all. The control interface doesn't even tell me that I don't need to know the keyboard controls because I'm using a mouse and I can do everything with just a click.
I spend my first level of the game working out just how I'm supposed to do anything because there's no guide whatsoever. Turns out if I scroll the mouse wheel, that selects which enemy the knight should be targeting. I need to left-click the ability I want to use then left-click on the knight's limbs.
I was prompted to upgrade my ability by clicking the padlock, but no matter how much I clicked the padlock it just healed the knight. Ohhhh, I have to right-click to get out of healing mode and into select-ability mode in order to upgrade the ability.
Just little things that would've been nice to be informed about so I didn't have to go crazy trying to work out what's what.
In this first attempt as I try to learn what should be a very basic game, I made it to Day 8 before I failed to heal my charge.
Overwhelmed by the fiery attacks that left him with multiple DoTs, and unhelped by my priest with her lack of mana, the brave knight soon fell to the horrors of being OOM (out of mana).
At least I got some sort of score in this failed attempt.
Turns out this game is actually a rogue-lite although it's not marketed as such. Suddenly my interest rose a notch.
Turns out your PP score is used for upgrading your healer as she lives through this never-ending groundhog day of healing her knight forevermore.
Clarity and it's recovery of mana is going to be my first go-to. However, I don't have enough PP. So I forego any other possible upgrades and dragged the knight back into the dungeon.
Armed with the knowledge of my first attempt, I had a little plan this time.
In a lot of the enemy groups are red balls. If you get the red ball, you can tell the knight to use it on his next move and the entire group of enemies will be obliterated!
This was a great plan and all and I got further than I got last time, but I failed to take into account our torch supply required for navigating this dungeon.
You get more torches randomly amongst the groups of creatures, and you can also craft them. But when you're crafting the game doesn't pause so you have to constantly go in between crafting and healing, crafting and healing. I haven't yet mastered that, and so, our last torch fizzled out and the knight perished.
But I had enough PP to upgrade my Clarity. 😉
Into the dungeon we go again, this time with the intent to use red balls wisely and to obtain torches! Which means killing at least some of the enemies the conventional way instead of using the red ball as soon as possible.
And I failed worse somehow. xD
Well, that 'somehow' was because I was trying to read the abilities I could spec into, but I can't read and spec into a new ability and look after the knight all at the same time.
A pause would be nice so I can actually know the abilities I can choose?
This is fun for a little time-waster, and actually more amusing than what I originally expected when I first downloaded it today... but damn. Maybe if I could choose my abilities during each pause before the next wave of monsters shows up?
When you level during the dungeon you can either upgrade an existing ability or choose a new one, and I'm not just going to randomly click on some random ability and hope that it's one I would like. If I'm going to be a healer, I'd like to know what the dang ability does.
Technically you can pause the game, but while paused you can't hover over the abilities and read them. Ugh.
After upgrading a bunch of stuff with some more PP after losing my knight several more times, I at last managed to read a couple of the abilities and quickly got my knight a shield with which I'd use upon a targeted limb, and a heal that healed every limb after 10 seconds of being cast.
With those 2 new abilities in my arsenal, my next run went a lot smoother.
...until my last torch fizzled out again and I didn't have crafting materials to burn for a new one. xD
At this rate, I'm not even sure if there is an actual end to the dungeon or if you're just supposed to go through it as far as you can before you perish?
Steam reviews say that there is an end and technically you can get there on your very first playthrough... well... not me.
Either way, it's an alright little time waster despite the horrible crucial first-moments-in-game First Impressions. I wouldn't recommend anyone go out of there way to get it though. 🤷♀ Maybe if it's discounted for a dollar and you fancy something to kill some time.
You can find it on the Steam Store here!
𝒰𝓃𝓉𝒾𝓁 𝓃𝑒𝓍𝓉 𝓉𝒾𝓂𝑒! 😊