Overture: No Shame in This Game
The guys over at Black Shell Media know what they’re about. They are about great Role Playing Games, plain and simple. First, they brought us an incredibly in-depth, hilariously fun if somewhat bizarre, game with ASCII graphics with SanctuaryRPG: Black Edition. That game isn’t Overture, by any means. Overture is about as far from SanctuaryRPG as a game can be, and still be called a Role Playing Game. Don’t mistake this for a criticism or indictment, this isn’t that. This is to express how vast the role playing genre can be, and how flawlessly Black Shell Media have traversed that vastness with just two titles.
Overture doesn’t have an in-depth story; you pick a character, you get dropped into a dungeon full of enemies, kill them dead and escape. Complicated, right? One wouldn’t think so. One would be wrong, so very wrong. Overture is more in depth when it comes to character choice; giving you four classes of six characters to choose from. Each character has different attacks and secondary skills. The control scheme is also flawlessly simple, using the WSAD for directional control, your mouse for aiming, left clicking to attack, and right clicking to pick items up or use your secondary ability. That combined with the random dungeon generation leads to an incredibly challenging and unique trek through the dungeons created around you. You’ll never get the same run twice, if you are fortunate enough to escape once.
The four classes you can claim are Warriors, Rogues, Mages, or Shamans. I could go into the six subclasses of each class, but it’s much more fun to find out the differences on your own. They will change the play style of the game significantly; find one that works for you from each class. You can unlock all the subclasses and upgrade your favorite subclasses with gold you find in-game. I tend to prefer the Duelist or the Paladin; both of whom are ranged and have a fun secondary ability.
As a fun aside, you can also find minions while running around staying alive. They are going to be kicking it in boxes and will be thrilled to fight to the death for you if you only let them out. We don’t know where they got kidnapped from, or why the sick bastards enjoy kidnapping chefs and archers so much. Sadly for them, they tend to live out their final days as meat shields for you. It’s better than dying trapped in a box, right?
You also get to equip yourself with a sword, shield, armor, ring, and charm. These don’t make you attack or defend or magic any differently, but do allow you to do each better. Most of them have a passive ability that will help you out. Those passives are all percentage chances of doing something fun; like causing a poison cloud or dagger nova, there might even be some that allow you to summon skeletons to walk into and hurt things. You may want to stick with weaker equipment that has better passive abilities. I’ll leave you to experiment with different bling and effects.
The price tag belies just how much fun this game is. For just five dollars, you get hours of gameplay, twenty-four classes, and nigh infinite replayability. While it isn’t going to be staggeringly in depth, there is no shame in this game. It will beat you about the face all day long and smile the whole time. We both know you’ve spent a lot more money on a lot worse games, and without knowing your library, you should be ashamed of yourself. You know what you did, and now, so do I. It’s the perfect time to remedy that, however. Just hop on Steam, buy Overture and enjoy for hours and hours. Other companies should take note; Black Shell Media does it right. (That one’s for free, you can print that.)
