First impression of Betrayal League in two words: "Unintelligible Nonsense"

Some of the changes in this update looked like good "quality of life" changes, at a glance, so a friend and I reinstalled this game to try it out together. I played through the first damn zone after Lioneye's Watch with my friend. This was a mistake.

This league does nothing to introduce its mechanics before asking the player to choose between two options that come out as absolute gibberish badly needing explanation and context, of which there is none. And only the first player to enter the zone gets to actually participate in this system, which is also not indicated in any way but by one's confused friend not being able to interact with the defeated "Guff" for no immediately apparent reason.

Why is there even a party system in this game? And if the game is going to be effectively single-player, can it at least be bothered to explain what "Bargain: Remove all items(?) from other fortifications." and "Interrogate: Gain 3 intelligence per turn(?) but Guff loses 1 rank(?) when done." even mean before demanding that I choose between them? Also, for my friend (after we reloaded the zone without me picking either option) the former choice was replaced with something equally unintelligible which just randomly spoiled that Haku has joined the syndicate apparently. Wonderful.

So, this just felt like a massive waste of time. It doesn't matter how many systems you clean up if you just add even more confusing nonsense right on top. I have better things to do than be given a headache right at the start of the game. For starters, I could stare at my wall for an hour.

It’s all on the chart.

Intelligence is the meter on the division leader and shows you progress towards their safe house.

Rank is the rank of the member in the organization(number of stars) the most obvious consequence of rank is you get stronger choices for defeating high rank members.

Items give the members buffs in fights, you can see their items on the chart.

It’s basically like a board game but you need to learn the rules by playing it a bit rather than reading the rules packet. You’re not going to make any permanent mistakes with it so don’t worry about it and just observe and learn .

the game has become to complex and to saturated that standard league is now more enjoyable

syndicate and bestiary is to OP for the area levels to the point a lot of streamers and players and just skipping them

tier 1 map flooded mine lvl 68 map.... crimson fang the faceshreded is easily a lvl 85 boss totally unplayable.. broken mechanics totally unbalanced

The division leader is a question mark. The choices were both unintelligible. "Items" reads as "loot drops". Nothing made any sense. I had to read a guide. Too many unintroduced features are being referenced simultaneously. And I can't play it with my friend without a headache.

I actually like some of the Immortal quests, the forts esp., and Einhar, because he auto-captures his monsters now.

Crafting seems... easier now? No clue, but it seems cheaper as well as simplified. One simple workbench vs. all the others as single benches.

But the Syndicate / Immortal (i call them that) balancing is... horrible for some encounters. They got instagib potential.

I don't have too many qualms with the Syndicate board, I think I have it mostly figured out and it's not too bad. The only things I'm not clear on are how exactly rivalries work, it seems to be the same as trust, and I'm not clear on how members shift in and out of the safehouse slots, since it has seemingly no relation to rank.

They could have explained it a little better, this is a complex system that definitely needs a bit more hand-holding at the start.

Rivals have higher chance to negatively affect each other. In example, I have Tora and Guff as rivals and almost every time I defeat Tora, she gives me the chance to remove Guff from the syndicate. Everything has its sense, and the try-mistake system also works if something is unclear. What doesn't work is to blindly pick a random choice each time :P

Yeah, this League really doesn't explain itself anywhere near well enough. Normally when I get onto a new League, I ask my friends what the score is. This time all they had was 'I don't really know.'

Like 'items' is super friggin misleading. Do you get those items? Do they make them drop better items? Is it a risk/reward thing or just risk?

Also remove Bu's Delight, it's actually unfairly broken given the amount of corpses.

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Lykkoith wrote:

What doesn't work is to blindly pick a random choice each time :P

Well I think that's what most of us are doing since, as OP pointed out, there's no clear direction or tutorial. This is such a unique (see: stupid) concept that it's not like anyone has a previous experience to relate to.
A good example is that I recently chose to execute Haku. Now wtf does that do? Is he gone forever? Does that matter? There's no context for the choices, I think most of us are just randomly connecting colored strings to pictures like some 3 year old's puzzle game. Honestly I'm at the point where when I see the syndicate icons on the map I just try to go around or ignore them.
Bottom line, this league just isn't fun.

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Atlasphoenix wrote:

A good example is that I recently chose to execute Haku. Now wtf does that do? Is he gone forever? Does that matter? There's no context for the choices, I think most of us are just randomly connecting colored strings to pictures like some 3 year old's puzzle game. Honestly I'm at the point where when I see the syndicate icons on the map I just try to go around or ignore them.
Bottom line, this league just isn't fun.

Every action has its consequences written pretty clearly above it. Executing Haku made him rise in ranks, because it's the immortal syndicate, they're immortal. Whenever they die, they get brought back from the dead and get compensated.

Everything is either explained or implied by Jun or the targets themselves, they talk a lot.

For now I'm mostly playing with their ranks and position in order to complete the challenges, but some people are already thinking about what's best, like avoiding tanky targets in timed encounters like Transportation.

It's true that part of the mechanics seem to be kept secret, like I didn't get any "Execute" option for a long time, trying to get more captains, until I deranked some other targets. I guess there's a cap.

But that's really specific. For the most part, the way the syndicate works is pretty easy to understand, you just need to give it a try and listen.