Lords of Xulima

 PC
User Score
7.8

Generally favorable reviews- based on 128 Ratings

User score distribution:
  1. Positive: 93 out of 128
  2. Mixed: 21 out of 128
  3. Negative: 14 out of 128

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  1. wolf80207
    Jan 7, 2016
    7
    After The Video Review: Lords Of Xulima

    Hours Played: 12 hours Price: $19.99 USD I normally do this anyways and I had a lot to say so I just kept it in this format. The Good: Old school style with new school mechanics: it has kind of an old school feel of ultima in a way but it’s supported by new age combat and graphics. Interesting combat game-play: basically if your    After The Video Review: Lords Of Xulima

    Hours Played: 12 hours

    Price: $19.99 USD

    I normally do this anyways and I had a lot to say so I just kept it in this format.

    The Good:

    Old school style with new school mechanics:
    it has kind of an old school feel of ultima in a way but it’s supported by new age combat and graphics.
    Interesting combat game-play:
    basically if your enemy is using a melee weapon and he’s to the far left of the screen he can’t attack the far right without moving first, which costs half a turn to move. In addition to that it’s all turn based combat with weapons and skills that can stun and while not as comprehensive as say final fantasy x and it’s turn based system it’s still pretty good.
    The voice overs are pretty good:
    often the proper voice can make or break a game, but they pretty much nailed it here the narrator and the voice of god sound very appropriate and usually are dipping with dramatic feel to it.
    The environments are pretty well detailed and everything looks good:
    it actually a good thing to be a developer on Steam and not have your game look like it was done in MS Paint and here it looks really well done, with good detail in pretty much everything you encounter and every where you go.
    It has a Steam workshop:
    there is too many mods and for the most part they haven’t done too much in terms of really outlandish stuff, but it’s always nice to have.

    The Bad:

    The outright necessary grinding:
    I’m not kidding here you WILL grind in this game you WILL kill every enemy in every area if you want to continue on your quest there is no maybe here.
    but wait there’s more! the enemy's are finite and you get a bonus for killing all of them that you will need, so you LITTERY have to go everywhere to fight every enemy.
    The lack of skills:
    the ones they do have are more trial and error and outside of the divine summoner class it feels like most characters really don’t have a lot of skills in the beginning and as they level up they still feel really under powered.
    Complete lack of explanations:
    most of the skill icons you can’t click on so you don’t know what they do same with the icons on the weapon stat’s, even concepts like when poison or bleeding will affect you is never explained, Also it never gives you a look at what skills you character will receive way down the line so you're never sure what you're building towards.
    Often times completely unrealistic with its difficulty:
    somehow even after you take down nearly EVERY enemy in EVERY part you can go in a map if you didn’t build you didn’t min/max your characters correctly then congrats you get to start all over again from the beginning of the game.
    it has such an unforgiving difficulty that even if you have been playing CRPG’s your entire life you're still going to lose, that being said however you're probably going to restart to get your revenge (after you buy a new keyboard).
    The DLC feels like a slap in the face:
    I swear it like the devs when they making them were like “aww is it too hard for you? that’s ok you can just spend more of your money too make it allll better.”
    It has a weird stutter when you run:
    this could just be my computer but it has a really weird jerky stutter when your character starts running again it could be just me but it’s weird.

    The Summary:

    This game just is not approachable by anybody who isn’t direly serious about needing a challenge in a CRPG and Dark Souls & Bloodborne just aren’t your thing, everybody else just needs to stay away from this title because the only thing you’ll find with this game is frustration and a lot of broken keyboards, but if you can make it past all that there is a good game here albeit one I can’t recommend but a good game all the same.    … Expand
  2. PowerGamer
    Dec 2, 2014
    7
    Fun until it gets old.

    I really loved this game for a while. Reminded me a bit of the simple fun I had playing the Ultima games back in the 80's. It's got the usual things that you like from RPGs. The character creation, the battle with monsters, the loot, the leveling, etc. Again for a while but then after so many hours, you will see a lot of it is the same; in particular you    Fun until it gets old.

    I really loved this game for a while. Reminded me a bit of the simple fun I had playing the Ultima games back in the 80's.
    It's got the usual things that you like from RPGs. The character creation, the battle with monsters, the loot, the leveling, etc.

    Again for a while but then after so many hours, you will see a lot of it is the same; in particular you spend the majority of the time in battles.
    So repetitive my shoulder actually started to ache from the same repetitive moments, and I'd literally get sleepy doing the same things over again.
    Although this goes a lot for other RPGs of this style (like the final fantasy style et al).

    Then at first you see a lot of the world is the same and rather bland.

    It lacks direction. There is a story behind it, but it feels like it's a lot of aimless wandering, again over
    a lot of scenery that got bland.

    Finally the classes are not hashed out as good as they probably could be. Some are over powered, some are basically useless.
    You would expect that a typical balanced party setup like:
    A tank, cleric, thief, and Mage, then one extra like a Bard for the buffs or CC, would work great.
    But it turns out the way the game balance works you'ed be better off with more tanks, or otherwise high HP and defense guys. I though a thief was needed to have a lock picking, disarming expert, but it
    turns out I could have had the main "explorer" character learn those skills and a thief archer was almost useless in battle.
    The mechanics are that AOE CC (area of effect, crowd control) characters are some of the best, as the simple fact that whom ever has the most to attack gets the most hits in. If you can lock the enemy up the less damage you will take, and killing them faster en mass will save you a lot of the tedium.
    You are best to read some kind of guide before you start, rather then using your intuition from previous RPG experiences.

    Overall worth the price since you will get a lot of RPG enjoyment out of it, but I doubt you will make it to the end..    … Expand
  3. Doutzen
    Jan 28, 2015
    7
    First 10 hours with that game are like "wow, it's 1998 again and I'm exploring new Baldur's Game for the first time". But after that, you come to the town looking exactly as the first one and you have to do... almost exactly the same things. Just in different locations. So, this game is awesome, but it's getting boring and schematic. I really liked this game, but to be fair, I cant' rateFirst 10 hours with that game are like "wow, it's 1998 again and I'm exploring new Baldur's Game for the first time". But after that, you come to the town looking exactly as the first one and you have to do... almost exactly the same things. Just in different locations. So, this game is awesome, but it's getting boring and schematic. I really liked this game, but to be fair, I cant' rate it higher than 7, because it started to bore me after first few hours and finally I couldn't even finish it.… Expand
  4. LD9000
    Nov 16, 2014
    6
    Tedious.
    I'm a fan of turn based RPGs, and this one is getting on my nerves - I find myself thinking - why am I clicking on these monsters for hours, cant I go play something better? Wizardry8, Jagged Alliance, King's Bounty and more recently Divinity Original sin - all of these are examples of superb turn based games, where the core of the game - turn based combat was fun and    Tedious.
    I'm a fan of turn based RPGs, and this one is getting on my nerves - I find myself thinking - why am I clicking on these monsters for hours, cant I go play something better? Wizardry8, Jagged Alliance, King's Bounty and more recently Divinity Original sin - all of these are examples of superb turn based games, where the core of the game - turn based combat was fun and challenging. In this game battles are too long and too tedious to be enjoyable.

    Sure, the game promises 100 hours gameplay, but you will soon realize why it is so - you will be repeating the same boring fights over and over and over again. For example the forest of Nabros has the same patrol of 10 soldiers, which you will be running from until you can defeat them. Guess what? Once you can beat one patrol, you can beat all of them, and it becomes a grind. Then you will be running to town to buy your +5 speed blessing every 24 in-game hours.

    While you can push towards new lands and get more challenging fights, you will still be pestered by hordes of invisible roaming encounters which offer you an option to run/camouflage, but no autoresolve, meaning you WILL evenbually be forced to fight these.

    The game deserves a credit for exploration - this is the true strength of this game. Dungeons are pretty cool - there are 4 castles, 8 temples an 8 towers to explore plus a number of smaller dungeons. These are well thought out with traps, secret doors and various hints dropped around.

    Puzzles are decent, there's a number of "type answer here" kind of riddles.

    The game offers some non-linearity - you can go as far as you can, as long as you can defeat the guards at zone transitions. Unfortunately the power levels of these game are rising steeply - you simply won't kill a group of 200hp guards which hit for 30 damage if your toughest tank has 100hp and 20 damage. Large portions of the game are blocked off by these "Titanic" challenges that you cant beat until much later.

    If you made a mistake of attacking guards in the first town too early, you will be locked into a very small game area where you will have to grind for 3 hours before you can defeat the 10 man patrols that box you in from the northern lands.

    This brings me to the next gripe - ridiculously beefy enemies which offer no challenge. 400hp treants, 800hp dinosaurs, etc. 3 of my damage dealers can do 20-40 damage per attack. There's no challenge to these fights -tank and spank, repeat.

    The RPG system is OK - your characters can learn new skills as they level and spend skillpoints on improving existing skills. There are skill books and mushrooms that reward exploration by improving character stats.

    The equipment system is rather poor. Too often I found chests with like 100gold x 5 - all slots in the chest are filled with gold, there's rarely any equipment drops. The two vendors I found don't restock frequently, so at level 14 I'm continuously sitting on 6000 gold that I have nothing to spend on.

    Most of the equipment is both skill level and stat locked, so a sword might require 8 sword skill and 18 strength and agility.

    Overall, I doubt I will play this game through the entire 100 hours of gameplay.    … Expand
  5. Flatliner
    Nov 18, 2014
    5
    Ok, so I haven't put in 120 hours. I played the game for about 10, that is enough surely for any RPG.
    There are some good features to this game and I realise it is an indie game so naturally there are budgetary limitations. That said, the game is just too grindy and the reward for effort does not even come close to what I enjoy in RPGs.
    I can handle grindy games, I have completed Etrian    Ok, so I haven't put in 120 hours. I played the game for about 10, that is enough surely for any RPG.
    There are some good features to this game and I realise it is an indie game so naturally there are budgetary limitations. That said, the game is just too grindy and the reward for effort does not even come close to what I enjoy in RPGs.
    I can handle grindy games, I have completed Etrian odessey and many other games where it seems you are on a treadmill. The difference is when the combat and progression complement each other. Xulima does not do this in my opinion.
    The food mechanic is just dopey, pointless busy work, I don't think it add anything to tactical gameplay
    No point having a 100+ hour of RPG if 80 of it is the grind to get to the next quest area.    … Expand
  6. MR67
    Nov 2, 2018
    5
    I spent over a week on this game but just got fed up with it and uninstalled it as it was just becoming too much of a chore to play.

    This is an old-school RPG with combat like Might and Magic but a travel interface like King's Bounty or Diablo. In a nutshell, you play a party of 6 characters (5 of which are customisable) who travel to an island called Xulima to investigate what happened    I spent over a week on this game but just got fed up with it and uninstalled it as it was just becoming too much of a chore to play.

    This is an old-school RPG with combat like Might and Magic but a travel interface like King's Bounty or Diablo. In a nutshell, you play a party of 6 characters (5 of which are customisable) who travel to an island called Xulima to investigate what happened to the temples of the gods who used to live there. The main character of your party is called Gaulen the explorer, a ranger type who receives a vision from his god which then results in him rounding up 5 bold companions and travelling to Xulima to put things right. The game then opens with your party landing on the beach.

    Pros:
    - I love the music for this game (at least what I've heard so far).
    - There is a lot to do (but it can get quite repetitive).
    - The minigames for lock picking and trap disarming are simple but effective.

    Cons:
    - Harsh difficulty. Some people might not see it this way, but getting into the game is difficult, as combat is unforgiving and money and resources are very tight, at least for a while. Enemies can one-shot even your front line warriors with a lucky critical hit early on, and even after a few levels, your squishy mages and clerics can still be one-shotted by ranged or magical attacks. An enemy that should be a reasonable challenge can end up wiping your party out if it happens to get lucky with its RNG rolls. Your party needs to consume food as they travel, so this has to be carefully managed. You also have to ensure you keep a good supply of healing potions, torches and lockpicks, and this is made even more taxing by the fact that the developers decided it would be a great idea to have some of these items increase in cost as the party gains levels, so a lockpick that costed 40 gold pieces when your characters were 1st level goes up to over 200 gold pieces by the time they're about 10th level. Consequently, money is fairly tight most of the time. Also, the game forces certain encounters on you periodically which cannot be avoided, which is a real pain in the butt.
    - Loot. Very limited. Merchants will typically only stock around 10 each of randomly generated weapons, armour pieces, and cloaks/rings/amulets, and this only refreshes every few days. It will take several levels just to get your characters reasonably outfitted with suitable armour/weapons because the merchants will not stock what you are looking for or else you can't afford it. Weapons and armour are also stat and skill locked (eg. a longsword might require a Swords skill of 6 and an Agility score of 16 to use) which also restricts their usage. Enemy loot drops are pathetic, but this is a problem in a number of CRPGs. How many times have you defeated a small army of heavily armed and armoured soldiers just to get a couple of dozen gold pieces for your troubles?
    - Game mechanics suck. Speed is by far the most important character attribute as it affects how soon your character takes their turn in combat as well as how many times they can attack during a battle. Even with you regularly putting points into your characters' Speed stats every level, you still encounter super fast enemies like giant wasps that literally attack several times before your fastest character even gets to take their turn. Min-maxing is encouraged over role playing as even your doddering elderly mage ends up having to become a literal speed ninja just to remain reasonably effective in a combat. Dual wielding or bonuses for just using a single weapon are not supported so a thief character ends up having to be played like a warrior, either using a shield or a two-handed weapon. The RNG system in combat seems (to me, anyway) to favour your enemies, as your characters seem to end up missing or fumbling their attacks (which causes damage to themselves) more often than what enemies do.
    - Writing - could be better, as there are a number of spelling mistakes and grammatical errors. Story seems quite thin. Almost no backstory given for Gaulen and his companions just to flesh them out a little more and better explain their background, motivations etc.
    - Repetitiveness. Combat gets very repetitive after a while, as the process remains mostly the same with just the numbers increasing. Towns seem fairly similar - same merchants, same places to explore etc. Even the main quest itself is repetitive in what you need to do.
    - Gaulen: You're stuck with him in your party as he is critical to the main story. He is the only character in your party who can take the Explorer class, but thankfully you can decide where his skill points go as he levels up. Unfortunately, even though he possesses a number of very useful non-combat skills, he never ends up being as useful in combat as your other characters.

    Summary: Old-school RPG which you will enjoy if you're familiar with the older Might & Magic games and are prepared to put up with frequent game saving and reloading.    … Expand

Critic Reviews

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Metascore
71

Mixed or average reviews - based on 9 Critic Reviews

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 3 out of 9
  2. Mixed: 6 out of 9
  3. Negative: 0 out of 9
  1. CD-Action
    Jul 27, 2015
    65
    Lords of Xulima is ugly, some of its elements are too simplistic and the story is poor but you rarely find an RPG that tests you intellect to such a degree, making you count every coin you spend, thoroughly examine every piece of equipment, keep track of food supply, endlessly tackle puzzles, carefully manage characters’ stats, look for alternate routes and find out how to beat different monsters. [08/2015, p.69]
  2. Eurogamer Poland
    Apr 24, 2015
    70
    Lords of Xulima is an addictive and huge RPG. Numantian Games' production provides hours of engaging gameplay, despite its poor graphic design.
    Read full review
  3. Digitally Downloaded
    Feb 12, 2015
    70
    Lords of Xulima is strictly for the more masochistic of gamers. Its merciless difficulty that only exponentially spikes the further you play should come as a dream come true for fans who like the ultimate in ball-kicking.
    Read full review
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