"Is there something wrong with Lilith's game planners?”- Since the release of the PV for the sequel to their most successful game, Sword & Crusade: Departure, this is the most authentic feedback from players, and it has tended to intensify over time.
Let's pull back the memory to a few years ago, when "Sword and Expedition" had just opened the national uniform, implemented the most "old school" advertising strategy, invaded every corner of social **, and dominated the Chinese Internet in a way comparable to dominating everyone's mobile phones during this year's Double 11.
Since then, a "monster" has squeezed into the domestic game industry.
No one can ignore the success of "Sword and Crusade", its record alongside "Honor of Kings" on the best-selling list is too dazzling, and the 90-person project team divides 1The news of 900 million dividends is dazzling.
As of 2023, the dividend has been 3200 million.No one can ignore some of the problems with Sword & Crusade, and as an idle game, it has an abyss-like level of development, and critics of it will grasp this tirelessly criticized.
But the same -
No one can ignore the excellence of Sword & Crusade in terms of quality.
The highly stylized art style, marked by Art Deco, shook the aesthetics of gamers who were numb to the cookie-cutter "anime" style.
Based on the "level connection and equipment sharing" of all characters, under the logic of placing gameplay, the possibility of character matching and strategic confrontation is appropriately outlined, and while ensuring the diversity of roles and gameplay, it penetrates the seemingly contradictory logic of "rich, interesting, in-depth and casual".
Based on the game system, supplemented by special gameplay such as "Destiny Labyrinth" and "Top of Time", it crushes the fate of idle games at a glance, and horizontally broadens the gameplay possibilities that can be accommodated in this category.
Audio-visual, gameplay, experience, no matter how you look at it, Sword & Far Crusade is a pretty extreme game - you could even say that it has redefined what it means to be an "idle mobile game" to some extent.
So after that, we can see the birth of countless "AFK-like" (the abbreviation of "AFK Arena" in the English name of "Sword and Expedition", which is a meme of "hands off the keyboard" in English, and there is an obvious pun in this name) or games with "AFK" elements.
That's why you'll be able to see countless players become its fans, creating a seemingly frenetic and exaggerated revenue myth for its owner, Lilith.
To launch a sequel to such a game could not be simpler in business logic. All of its good qualities can be replicated in the sequel, and as long as Lilith continues to maintain their dominant art style and fix some of the problems in Sword and Crusade, it will be the perfect sequel - it's not something hard to imagine, you might as well think of Overwatch 2.
Among the things that capital hates the most, there must be a word called "change", change means risk, and risk means a decrease in returns. In the eyes of many players, Lilith has always been a game company with a strong "capital" flavor, and there is no reason for them not to continue the logic of "adapting to all changes with the same", and there is no reason not to lie in the shadow of the original myth and count money.
A still from the movie "Psychic Transmitter".But they didn't. The group, which was not very valued in the company at the beginning, came up with an idea to create a myth after a pat on the brain, and then began to pat its head again on the road to continue this myth.
What kind of game is Sword & Crusade: Departure?
They ditched the most stylized and eye-catching Art Deco style of the original game in favor of a "mediocre-looking" 3D rendering.
They abandoned the underlying logic of idle games, started 3D world exploration, played auto-chess strategy battles, and fought with factors such as terrain, mechanisms, and lineup genres - their perception of the group portrait of idle game players should have some indescribable deviations.
They even abandoned the "comfortable and autistic environment" where even guild hunting, player PK and other scenes were playing AI, trying to get players to go out and start socializing with other villains, not realizing that many players would rather go to the dock to order chips than say more to the seagull next to them.
This is not a sequel to "Sword and Expedition", this is the second and fifth boy of capitalism.
So, going back to the question from the players at the beginning, behind that question mark, there is not only anger and abuse, but also a deep degree of disbelief-
"Is there something wrong with Lilith's game planners?Are you going to kill the project, so that you can start a happy life with the dividends and N+1 of the previous work?”
That's what I thought before I played the game. Even after an hour of playing, I still thought the same thing.
But ......Soon, I was upset to find out that I was wrong about it.
It's not Sword and Crusade, it's Sword and Crusade: Departure. It continues the name of the former, but it does not fully continue the inner nature of the former, and it is not rigorous to criticize it under the simple framework of the original - because from the beginning, "Sword and Crusade: Departure" is determined to be something different from the original.
And what's even more annoying is that it does it.
From the perspective of the first generation, "Sword and Expedition: Departure" is indeed a rather maverick work. But if you stand in the perspective of a new work, many of its "changes" have quite tangible significance. If you have to compare the two works, then "Sword and Expedition: Departure" is to "Sword and Expedition", just like 3D is to 2D, the former brings not only dimensional changes and space expansion, but also the extension of the world and the development of roads.
Swords and Expeditions;Most of the gameplay content in Departure is the result of building on the foundation of Sword and Crusade.
Although they claim that the art style of this game is a "magic picture book", judging from the styling style of characters such as Rabbit Bow and Green Sword that appear in the PV, the 3D rendering style used in "Sword and Crusade: Departure" still has the shadow of the original Art Deco. And standing in the field of **3D rendering, "Sword and Expedition: Departure" is also quite good, it just hides its beauty under another set of art born out of persistence.
The internal logic of the auto-chess battle mode, which has changed greatly compared to the previous game, is also developed from the "3+2 position" mode in "Sword and Expedition", but in "Sword and Expedition: Departure", they have broadened many possibilities horizontally for this set of combat gameplay, adding bullet time, mechanism, terrain, positioning and other factors to affect the changes in the game.
The development of Sword & Crusade: Departure is clear from the development of combat gameplay - they were not prepared to stay in the comfort zone of traditional idle games, so they risked the criticism of such games and made the decision to complicate the battles.
In fact, there is already a trend in this area in Sword and Crusade. The positioning of many characters in Sword and Expedition and the timing of the release of ultimates will affect the development of the battle situation quite seriously, and for an idle game, this is already a certain amount of operation and mental energy, but its intensity is just in a fairly light range, so it will not shake the whole game fundamentally.
But "Sword and Crusade: Departure" has stepped on a rather strange threshold to advance this concept.
No stamina, no mandatory player advancement, light daily life, and the continuation of the original leveled equipment sharing mechanism for the whole team still maintain the dignity of the idle game for Sword & Crusade: Departure. However, the combat mechanics, which have further requirements for operation, strategy, and game understanding, make the gameplay of the game a little more serious than that of "idle games".
From an objective point of view, I personally appreciate the game design with more possibilities for gameplay, which is related to my profession and personal preferences. But admittedly, this can be a pretty delicate point for idle gamers.
And this is even more subtle under the influence of one of its main gameplay methods - big world exploration.
The big world exploration gameplay of Sword & Crusade: Departure is born from a cycle event dungeon "Top of Time" in "Sword & Crusade", and compared with other gameplay methods in "Sword & Crusade", the "Top of Time" dungeon has excellent performance in terms of story, level design, and playability. As a result, it has been expanded into one of the main gameplay features in Sword & Crusade: Departure.
This is undoubtedly a good decision for the "Sword and Expedition" series - the weakness of the story and the monotonous gameplay of simple level progression have always been the problems that "Sword and Expedition" has to face. And when the status of big world exploration is elevated, the project team really has room to expand the worldview and story of the game, so that those heroes who originally only described their stories in a few words can have more vivid performance.
At the same time, in the exploration gameplay of the big world, whether it is the interpretation of the plot, the design of the mechanism levels, or the existence of some puzzles, it undoubtedly greatly enriches the gameplay content of "Sword and Expedition: Departure". Also, "Sword and Crusade: Departure" doesn't have any obsession with teaching you to play games, and the plot and level progress in the big world are independent of each other, and you can do whatever you want.
In addition, the emphasis on the social system in this work makes this world explored alone a little more humane. Unlike many imagined "heavy social games", Sword & Crusade: Departure chooses a social mode that is closer to "asynchronous online" - this mode is clearly more in line with the tone and rhythm of its game. Players can encounter danger prompts left by strange players when exploring the large map, borrow the heroes of friends when they are struggling to tackle key problems, and happily greet and interact with players when they meet players on the large map.
In all fairness, on the basis of the original game elements of "Sword and Crusade", "Sword and Crusade: Departure" integrates the transformation of the combat system, the large-world exploration gameplay, and the asynchronous online social system, which is far more interesting, rich and playable than its predecessor.
These are the undeniable virtues of Sword & Crusade: Departure, but they are also the subtleties mentioned earlier: for an idle game, not being easy enough means not being placed.
It's hard not to ask the original question again
"Is there something wrong with Lilith's game planners?”
With questions in mind, we interviewed the game's project team, and the project team's answers were impressive
We hope to be able to accompany you for a longer time, whether it is from the time of day or from the span of time, I think at least ten years, the current goal is to be as long as possible, even the revenue model of the game, we are also based on long-term operation. ”
In a game market where the average lifespan of mobile games is only two or three years, making an operation plan of more than ten years, the simple vision of the "Sword and Expedition: Departure" project team finally has an answer to the question that has been implemented throughout this article
Sure enough, there is something wrong with their brains.
But at this point, the meaning of this answer has also changed somewhat compared to the beginning.
There is no doubt that as a sequel, as an idle game, Sword & Crusade: Departure has its own brilliance, as well as some rather subtle points. But since it's called "Departure", it might as well be seen as a "fresh start" work – and from that perspective, Sword & Crusade: Departure has indeed gone far enough, and it has been wonderful enough.
At the end of your analysis of the game, you'll be surprised to find that what makes Sword & Crusade: Departure seem incongruous is ultimately the fundamental nature of the game that is different from its predecessor, Sword & Crusade. This title is aimed not only at fans of Sword and Crusade, but also for other players who are interested in a richer way of playing.
Admittedly, whether it is 3D or a large world, or a different combat gameplay, it is the first time it has appeared in this game, and in subsequent updates, no one can guarantee its quality, and the production team itself admits that the challenges of producing this aspect of content are indeed beyond imagination.
But who said that the first person to put his mouth on a stone would not bite a crab?
Let the bullets fly for a while.