Game-A-Week

Game-A-Week Episode 18: Kurtzpel

10:08 PM

Kurtzpel is an action PvP MMO and its the game we're covering this week as our second game in the Roleplaying arc.

10:09 PM

This time, the type of roleplaying we went for was "Catfishing"

10:10 PM

Oh, yes. This time I became an E-girl. And I gotta say, I went into this thinking I'd just sexually harass random people online as a joke but it actually ended up working.

10:11 PM

So let's start this off by diving into the only thing that matters with this type of "goal" in mind: Character customization.

10:12 PM

And as luck would have it, Kurtzpel's character creator is incredible.

10:15 PM

You can fine tune every aspect of your character. Their maturity which affects their height, voice and shape. How muscular you want them to be, how "thick" (Yes, it actually used that word), you want them to be. How top/bottom heavy they are, whether they have a healthy frame or a weak frame. Front hair, back hair, side hair, pony tail and highlights. Eye and iris shapes. There is a TON.

10:17 PM

So I had to make the sexiest character in the universe or it wouldn't work. So I started thinking, what kind of woman am I into?

10:17 PM

I originally didn't want to go for blue hair because I feel like that's what I do in EVERY game. But blue IS my favorite color and you shouldn't fix what isn't broken. I was making MY perfect woman, after all. And after that, everything else went down like clockwork.

10:17 PM

So after I made my dream wife, it was time for me to become an E-girl.

10:18 PM

I started off by walking up to people in the lobby, kneeling down and saying something stupidly lewd like "slurp slurp owo"

10:19 PM

Now some people didn't like me doing this but after I threatened to grab them by the ankles and piledrive them into the ground, they had fewer objections.

10:20 PM

I thought I'd end up doing this the whole time because no one. ABSOLUTELY NO ONE. In their right mind would be dumb/desperate enough to take the bait.

10:21 PM

And then I got a bite.

10:21 PM

I received a party invite.

10:21 PM

I said "You need me?"

10:21 PM

"I need you in-game and in real life, babe"

10:22 PM

What. A. Nerd.

10:22 PM

He then said "Follow me"

10:23 PM

He took me to a place where no one else was and actually asked for my snapchat.

10:23 PM

I evaded the question with "Why don't you and I have some fun first?"

10:24 PM

So we did 1 v 1 matches. Not.... exactly what I had in mind but whatevs.

10:26 PM

So I said "I'll stomp you into the ground so hard, you won't even know what part is you is your dick"

10:26 PM

Someone who overheard me said "Holy shit, Ninijette"

10:27 PM

Anyway, dude was a sore loser. After I stomped him into the ground he was all like "You only won by a small margin". I gave him a 60 second headstart btw.

10:28 PM

He then asked me to get on Discord. Not only was I too socially awkward to jump into a voice chat with a total stranger but I couldn't under ANY circumstances allow my cover to be blown.

10:29 PM

So I had no choice but to use the Joestar Family Secret Technique.

10:32 PM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IZKDuQ3mPg8

YouTube

Ethananous512

The Joestar Family Secret Technique

10:32 PM

After that, I joined a nudist cult because they T-posed at me menacingly and finding prey was easier from that point on.

10:34 PM

So onto the actual game. Its a free-aim action game with RPG elements. So there's no targeting. Just attack and hope you hit something.

10:35 PM

After the tutorial, the game just kind of leaves you in the dust wondering "Well now what do I do?". Apparently queue up for PvP matches is what I do now.

10:37 PM

And that's pretty much everything this game has in the way of progression. You just fight other players. Its a PvP game. There IS PvE where you team up with players to take on a boss and its fun but it gets old quick. Once you actually know what you're doing the boss's HP bar is shredded to nothing in no time and it just becomes a way to grind out money. There's a harder PvE mode where you take on a boss plus normal enemies which can be more engaging due to more happening at once. But EVERY enemy screams "FOR THE GLORY OF BELLATOS" at the start of the mission and I wonder how that voice line ever passed QA. Because its earrape quality. Who or what is Bellatos? I don't know. It's never explained. It just destroys my eardrums, apparently.

10:40 PM

There are two types of classes in this game. Breakers which are tanky and Slayers which are glass cannons.

10:40 PM

You can have one main class and one secondary class. You can freely switch between them in a match.

10:42 PM

The combination I used was Fist and Sword. They were both breaker classes but I looked cool as hell! Although, yesterday, I started using cannon as my secondary which is a slayer class and the difference in damage was really noticeable. And also, the ability to have a ranged attack was really useful.

10:43 PM

But my main class 100% of the time was Fist. There's just something really satisfying about watching my physically superior anime girl grab a much smaller anime girl by the throat, smash her into the ground and then toss her across the room like she's nothing.

10:45 PM

The game is not balanced. I found myself being juggled and wombo combo'd by scythe mains more times than I'd like to admit.

10:45 PM

I hate scythes in this game with a burning passion. And I don't think I'm the only one that thinks its OP. Why? BECAUSE LITERALLY EVERYONE USES SCYTHE.

10:46 PM

And this game is pretty populated despite it recently having a mass exodus due to a massively hated update that went live last month.

10:48 PM

The game also pits you against bots until you rank up once so that was annoying. And there are a lot of technical issues. Mostly server related issues. This game lags like its going out of style.

10:51 PM

There isn't really much else going on with he game. There aren't any quests, no dungeons. Just PvP and sometimes you get the occasional item drop that gives you a slight stat boost. Or just do what I did and play until you have enough money to buy the cool looking items from the trading post.

10:52 PM

And yeah, that's pretty much Kurtzpel. The game has beautiful cel-shaded graphics. You know, not a lot of games have a cel-chaded graphics style and it boggles me why its so uncommon because its gorgeous and if you take one look at the Wind Waker on the gamecube, you'll notice it also ages like fine wine. A lot of people don't like the game anymore and I can understand why but I liked it.

10:56 PM

I give Kurtzpel a 6/10. Its a fun and beautiful game bogged down by a lack of direction, lack of balance, a plague of technical issues and some of the worst servers I've ever seen. But despite all of that, I still managed to find it fun and in the end, that's all that matters. Is it objectively bad? Maybe. But subjectively? I don't think so. I will continue to play this game. In my mind, its a keeper.

10:56 PM