Krater

 PC
User Score
7.1

Mixed or average reviews- based on 211 Ratings

User score distribution:
  1. Positive: 126 out of 211
  2. Mixed: 47 out of 211
  3. Negative: 38 out of 211

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  1. charlesvanzee
    Jul 29, 2013
    4
    Very repetitive game play and uninteresting missions makes this game very disappointing. I played it for about 10 hours and just couldn't bring myself to continue.
  2. AWG
    Jul 31, 2013
    4
    Krater starts as a promising RPG but it gets boring and ripetitive very soon. Also, it's apparently impossible to join a co-op match and many achievements are bugged. Not very funny.
  3. hoverball
    Dec 11, 2012
    1
    This is an initially appealing game, an old-fashioned turn-based (ish) squad scale RPG. The art style is cute, and the goofy humour is somewhat charming. Sadly, however, it is absolutely bugged to fsck. I am fed up with reporting basic bugs, to see them eventually declared fixed, when a cursory look shows that they aren't, and are easily reproducible. CTDs, save file corruption, vanishingThis is an initially appealing game, an old-fashioned turn-based (ish) squad scale RPG. The art style is cute, and the goofy humour is somewhat charming. Sadly, however, it is absolutely bugged to fsck. I am fed up with reporting basic bugs, to see them eventually declared fixed, when a cursory look shows that they aren't, and are easily reproducible. CTDs, save file corruption, vanishing items, GUI problems, you name it. That's before we get on to the simplistic and skewed mechanics, which need a major overhaul. It's a shame, Fatshark (the developers) themselves are friendly and polite on their forums- just they seem to have a really lousy development process, and a habit of putting out interesting-looking yet fatally bugged titles. I have wasted so much time struggling with bugs in this title, reporting them, waiting for patches, rinse and repeat- just to find that I no further forward. Leisure time is limited, and I don't expect to have to babysit games for near-homeopathic levels of entertainment. To justify this level of faffing about, this game would need to be a lot more entertaining than it is. I don't except this flakiness to fun ratio from free games- I sure as hell wouldn't from a commercial title. Even in a Steam sale, I would avoid this like the plague. There are far better games that you can pick up for less. Even all this time after release, it's barely beta quality.

    Sorry, Fatshark.    … Expand
  4. Devil_Man_X
    Dec 4, 2012
    1
    This game had so much promise. An interesting but failed take on the action RPG genre. At launch it was a buggy mess. Full of game breaking and crashing glitches. It launched without the promised multiplayer. In fact multiplayer was delayedeven further so that they could work on the games many flaws. When it did launch it was not what was promised pre-release. They had listed it on steamThis game had so much promise. An interesting but failed take on the action RPG genre. At launch it was a buggy mess. Full of game breaking and crashing glitches. It launched without the promised multiplayer. In fact multiplayer was delayedeven further so that they could work on the games many flaws. When it did launch it was not what was promised pre-release. They had listed it on steam as a co-op game and it is... kinda. It has co-operative portions. This is a little nit picky on my part but still another way that Fatshark has failed to deliver. Fatshark as a company are simply pitiful. Everything they release is overpriced, undersupported, buggy as hell and fails to deliver on their lofty pre-launch promises. Save the money and get something worth while or at least wait till a 80% Steam sale.… Expand
  5. theNILE
    Dec 8, 2012
    4
    The gameplay is incredibly repetitive, once you have your strategy you just do the same thing every battle. There is only a small variety of AI and most enemies are dealt with in the identical manner. Most dungeons look the same and they feel pointless. While the RPG elements are all really cool, the gameplay just becomes super dull. The world map is even worse though. The world map youThe gameplay is incredibly repetitive, once you have your strategy you just do the same thing every battle. There is only a small variety of AI and most enemies are dealt with in the identical manner. Most dungeons look the same and they feel pointless. While the RPG elements are all really cool, the gameplay just becomes super dull. The world map is even worse though. The world map you get doesn't let you view the WHOLE WORLD. I just have never seen such a terrible map in my life, not to mention the incredibly slow crawl between locations means getting across the world requires 10 minutes of more boring gameplay - because you get into battles. The graphics, sounds and dialogues are brilliant and I feel the style works incredibly well, unfortunately about half-way through the game, it falls flat on its feet because of the repetition which limits the gameplay time.… Expand
  6. Astaerus
    Jun 19, 2012
    3
    This review contains spoilers, click expand to view. TL;DR
    Interesting ideas
    Many are unnecessary as implemented
    The others feel like forced padding
    None of them seem to be balanced
    Play D3's Inferno difficulty or Path of Exile
    -----
    I bought this game at launch, and was immediately frustrated by several bugs (hidden key bindings that couldn't be fixed, alt tabbing causing unrecoverable issues, fog of war resetting when changing implants..) that were fixed rapidly. So kudos to the developers for fast response.

    To date I have 11.4 hours played, and beat the main storyline. The idea of the mechanics in this game is solid, but the implementation leaves much to be desired.

    Lies about enemy models:
    Part of the reason I bought this game was a claim of not just re-skinning all the monsters in the game. In my play time, pretty much all enemies behaved the same way.. maybe every hour or so I would see something different (a stun, or an acid pool) but for the most part everything behaves the same way with a very limited number of attacks. There is little graphical variety in enemies, and what may be there is hard to discern because of the angle of view.

    This also highlights a weakness of the whole encounter system: rarely will you fight more than 1-4 enemies at a time. The same patterns of groups will appear over and over and over.. it's just boring. The only interesting fight was the last one, and that was anti-climactic in its own right (because the game isn't stand-alone complete, story-wise)

    Team building:
    I know they are coming out with a boot camp that will let you upgrade characters, but unless you can also convert to the mutated versions of the classes this will be a mostly-useless feature. Each class has an alternate version with abilities that are just better in every way (e.g.: basic medic has a channeled HoT, and a single target heal with a cast time. Mutant medic has a fire-and-forget HoT buff, and an aoe heal with a cast time.)

    Because there is no boot camp right now and I did not want to waste my time buying and upgrading new tiers of heroes, about 2 hours into the game I simply ran to the center of the map and purchased level 15 heroes and tier 4 stat recipes. I wasn't using any guides or spoilers, it just seems fairly obvious that the giant capital city next to the glowing crater would have the best stuff for sale. If I was starting a new game I'm sure I could do this even faster. Level 4 items take the same ingredients as 1-3, they just require 4 of them - and give a proportionate boost per ingredient (level 1 is +5, 4 is +20). So there is no reason not to build them. The recipes were quite cheap.

    An hour later my heroes were all at max level. That means for nearly 3/4 of my play time, my characters did not intrinsically advance. They got better upgrades and weapons, yes, but I think the experience system is basically useless.

    Difficulty:
    This is the easiest ARPG I have ever played. The penalty for being knocked down in Normal difficulty is effectively 100 Kr to heal, which is nothing. You can always teleport out of a dungeon so if you stick around long enough to accumulate an injury, it's because you chose to. The only other challenging option (to gain a full injury each time you're knocked down) is just asking to add pointless fluff time to your game as not all injuries can be cured.

    Anyway, once I bought my level 15 guys I never was knocked down. One application of my medic's aoe heal puts everyone to full, and his heal over time fully heals every second. No worry about limited resources, as these heals don't even have a cooldown.

    Because all packs are small and similar, I never had to vary my strategy.. within two cycles of cooldowns on my dps and tank, every enemy squad I encountered was defeated.

    The skill system:
    I love the idea of customizing skills and having flexibility to add different effects to each power, bending class boundaries, etc... but I swear that Krater doesn't actually want this to happen.
    For example:
    I put 5 healing buffs on my dps's basic power that is never on cooldown. He had maybe 600 hp, and I would see it heal him for 15-20.
    I put 3 healing buffs in my medic's aoe and it heals everyone for 400+ hp.

    I put stat buffs on my tank's aoe attack.. they last 15s.
    I add some implants to increase his buff duration... the buffs still last 15s.

    I put added damage enhancers on my medic's HoT ability... nothing happens.

    It is entirely possible that I simply do not understand the fundamental mechanics of this game... but it is so easy that I didn't have to do any additional exploring or experimentation. I give everyone defense/stamina, and strength for the dps/tank, focus for the medic, and my team steamrolls everything. Intelligence is worthless.

    Bottom line:
    If you're looking for a serious challenge, I would suggest diablo 3's Inferno difficulty.
    If you''re just looking for an ARPG with fun and interesting mechanics, I would go for Path of Exile.    … Expand
  7. kubajakubowski
    Sep 12, 2012
    3
    This game surely has got, a potential, but at this moment, and its really quite some time after the premiere it's unplayable piece of crap...

    My overall imopression is like that - BUG BUG BUG. I can't even get into the settings screen because I'm getting kicked! Game itself has fine gameplay, creation of the world, great music, interesting fight etc. but you can't enjoy any of it    This game surely has got, a potential, but at this moment, and its really quite some time after the premiere it's unplayable piece of crap...

    My overall imopression is like that - BUG BUG BUG. I can't even get into the settings screen because I'm getting kicked! Game itself has fine gameplay, creation of the world, great music, interesting fight etc. but you can't enjoy any of it because of the technical issues!

    So I feel robbed. I possibly have a very nice game which could be a lot of fun, but I can't get to it because of BUG WALL.    … Expand
  8. Beaner
    Jul 22, 2012
    3
    I don't typically write negative reviews but I had to do so with this game. Graphics are nice but controls need to be improved. The game play gets old fast with the same maps being used over and over. Finally, I'm not a hard core gamer and just like to play casually without constantly dying. Even on casual mode, I'm constantly getting killed simply by exploring just a little past theI don't typically write negative reviews but I had to do so with this game. Graphics are nice but controls need to be improved. The game play gets old fast with the same maps being used over and over. Finally, I'm not a hard core gamer and just like to play casually without constantly dying. Even on casual mode, I'm constantly getting killed simply by exploring just a little past the first town. So I found myself constantly running circles on the map around the first town and still ended up getting killed. I'm a strict ARPG fan and not a fan of strategy games, so perhaps I'm not properly controlling each of the 3 characters. Who knows. Unless they make a "super casual" difficulty level or properly teach novice players how to control the characters better, this game will find its way to my "junk" labeled game pile on Steam. Pity.… Expand
  9. Kobodoshi
    Jun 17, 2012
    0
    I've jumped through hoops for three days to get it to run, but it won't create a direct3d window correctly. Check their support forums before you buy.

    My particular problem is one where the swap chain gets resized to 0 by 0 (probably due to a bug in their software since everything else I run on my machine works just fine). I've updated drivers, updated directx, updated dependencies,    I've jumped through hoops for three days to get it to run, but it won't create a direct3d window correctly. Check their support forums before you buy.

    My particular problem is one where the swap chain gets resized to 0 by 0 (probably due to a bug in their software since everything else I run on my machine works just fine). I've updated drivers, updated directx, updated dependencies, reinstalled the application, and so on. I have a HD 6950 which seems to pop up a lot in their support forums. They have patched three times since they launched a few days ago and each patch seems to break the game for more players. Fortunately its been broken for me since day one and I'm not on a rollercoaster of working versus broken, its just plain broken all the time.    … Expand
  10. huw12313212
    Feb 8, 2013
    0
    this game is not really funny, I have 3 character to control, but what is different with only 1? I don't feel any different. this game totally failed to give players fun.

Awards & Rankings

66
#66 Most Discussed PC Game of 2012

Critic Reviews

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Metascore
52

Mixed or average reviews - based on 36 Critic Reviews

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 2 out of 36
  2. Mixed: 25 out of 36
  3. Negative: 9 out of 36
  1. Pelit (Finland)
    Oct 13, 2012
    65
    Krater has a lot of good things going for it: an original setting (post-apocalyptic Sweden!), a fresh take on ARPG leveling mechanics, a moody soundtrack… Sadly, the monotonous and boring combat makes playing it a chore. Kudos for Fatshark for actively patching their game, but only time will tell whether the potential will ever be fulfilled. [Aug 2012]
  2. Absolute Games
    Sep 25, 2012
    48
    This game will bring you only pain and humiliation. It will drive you insane, filling your nightmares with many-colored bears.
    Read full review
  3. PC Master (Greece)
    Aug 31, 2012
    76
    Mixed emotions… Krater tries to be a squad-based action RPG, but ultimately it does not fully deliver, neither as squad-based, nor as action-hack/slash, nor even as an RPG- and that is truly a shame, for there was something really brilliant here. Still, it remains a fun way to pass many game-hours. [August 2012]
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