I also found a minor bug. At higher levels, enemies may interrupt your combo for a single attack. This is signaled by a short alarm sound -- if you hear it, the next hit you land will be followed b an enemy attack. However, if your first hit after the warning kills the enemy, it will not play the death animation but the attack animation. (Luckily you won't take damage from the 'dead' hit, though) Update: related to this, i had this happen on an enemy. The next stop in the level was a temple entrance and while tapping it so her royalness could enter, a phantom attack came out of nowhere and hit her unexpectedly, killing her. It loaded the temple, then displayed the death animation, and while the retry screen was showing the temple was scrolling at running pace in the background.
You're right in that I don't fully understand how the game works but here's the rundown on my experience. You start a run. You get off to enemy #1. Let's say it takes 10 hits to kill that enemy, but you can only usually get 7 off before the enemy lands his 3rd hit and kills you. So you keep trying over and over again until you finally get that 10th hit. By then you're almost dead and defeating another enemy is next-to impossible, so you die and start over, repeating the process. Let's say 20 runs later you can finally level up. At this point you're getting so good at combos that you can take down the second enemy every now and then but for the most part you're just grinding that first enemy. Now your character has finally leveled up again. What I expect to happen when I see "Level up" is that my character gets stronger, making it easier to take down enemies. What usually happens in Combo Queen is that the game gives you harder enemies the higher level you are. In practice, it means that your character is even worse at taking out the enemies that game throws at you that it was before. You were already having a hard time getting past enemy #2, and now that you and your enemy set has leveled you are right back where you started from, stuck on enemy #1. It makes me feel like the game is just a never-ending cycle if I look at it like it's an RPG. It doesn't matter how strong my character gets or even how good I get at getting combos. The better I get, the faster I level up, the faster enemy #1 gets more difficult until I can't combo enough to beat it. End result: I've been playing the game frequently for the past few days and I still don't feel like I have achieved anything since I first started playing. I hope that makes it more clear. I'd be happy to reiterated or elaborate once again if need be.
Not to be mean, but your idea of "so good at combos" as presented here might not be as good as you think. If you find yourself stuck on the first enemy most of the time, then I would say you're not very good at all. Also, stop looking at this game as an rpg. It has some rpg elements, but the core gameplay is an endless timing/reaction high score chaser.
@Bean - reading through the thread, the dev has already mentioned gameplay balances are coming. Most agree that progression hits a halt for enough people that the dev is looking at a way to balance this....nothing new there and there are pages of this complaint. I think we all know that's the issue. Let's give the dev some time to work it out
I think two factors contribute to the frustration. First is the amount of hits you can take compared to the enemy -- oh hi, you just landed a 25 hit combo and then mistimed a swing? Dont mind me killing you in2 hits. Second is that it's hard to get the defense timing right, especially for the faster swinging enemies. I would swear i'm tapping in the right rhythm but even so they still often get a swing through when they attack 3 to 5 times per second. In combination with the 2 strikes you're out game over i wouldnt be surprised over ragequits
@HotHamBoy, u r spot on on most counts, but in the end the game is awesome for a game tht is basically terrible on most counts. It's the best wtf is this game I've ever addictively kept coming back to for more meaningless punishment. Zero incentive to keep playing. Just my stubborn refusal to accept defeat flaw keeps bringing me back. Here's to hoping the update delivers something to allow this great game to achieve some modicum of reward.
Hello Im also someone that registered here to add my opinion on this game. At first I quite enjoyed that game, but now Im lvl 10 and it has become more an act of frustration to me. I also get between 10-25 combos most of the time with the 6 combo tome. I know I may be just echoing what some others have said, but I want to put it into my own words and add some ideas to it. The biggest problem is namely "progression". With typical endless runner games the main goal is to beat your high score and go "farther", with many of these as you play you can gain items or perks to help you progress farther on your next run and as you go father it gets more difficult. However this game pretty much runs in the opposite direction, the more you play the harder it is to progress instead of the farther you go the harder it is to progress. I thought the whole idea of lvling up was to be able to progress farthur, kill more enemies, get more money and exp, not the other way around. Sure they do give 2x more money and exp now, but thats at the cost of them have 10x more HP, doing 5x more attacks and being able to do "tricks" from pre-emptive strikes, large amount of attacks,feints and now at lvl 10 counter attacks that completely screw up my combo rhythm. Also why are you giving us and attack stat and weapons that make us stronger if after we level the enemies are just gonna get so much stronger that it doesnt even make a difference? HOORAY I got an axe that does 1.2x more damage now! Too bad the enemies are now taking 10x more hits to kill. Its not us thats leveling up, but the enemies here. Before making it to lvl 10, i reached the boss at stage 10 a few times, but the funny thing was, he was actually EASIER than the enemies I had to fight before him. Sure he had about the same amount of HP, taking 30-40 hits to kill, but he only attacked 2-5 times and didnt do any tricks compared to the 3-15 hits along with feints at the time. Now lvl 10 I can hardly pass the 5th guy due to counters. I currently feel like im doing a boss rush with the actual boss being more of a grunt for me to relax on. The summary of what im trying to say here is that having the enemies lvl up instead of you thus making it harder and harder to get past even the 1st enemy turns that game into a punishment game the more time and effort you put into it instead of allowing you to more easily past the 1st enemy thus allowing you to get farther for tougher enemies, bosses and more exp and money. We got 3 different records in the game, hits, parries and kills. We can get higher hits and parries due to enemies having higher HP and attacking more, but because ALL of them get stronger including the ones at the beginning breaking our record for kills just gets tougher and tougher. So heres my suggestion. Implement a sort of "checkpoint" system allowing us to choose where we start off at. This way for those of us that want to increase our kill streak, earn money, exp and get better at the game without having to go at some brutally strong enemy right the beginning, we can. While for those who do enjoy the current way it is and wants to skip over weaklings to fight enemies with huge amounts of HP so they can try for the 100 hit combo achievement, they can too. Now just a few questions, is the golden tom an unlockable? Im just guessing I need to kill a golden right now. As for outfits, is that also unlockables? Or are they not implemented yet?
So here's a screenshot of my progress... I've reached level 16 and I have the Bloody Mess axes with the 6-hit combo, but I believe I'm at my limit. The big guys take probably over 100 hits to kill now, even with the scaled damage and axes. I still haven't been able to kill a golden, either. Here's to hoping things get scaled back *just* a bit. More purchasables would be good too. How about Axes that increase the amount of hits you can take each time you retain a certain high combo (like 30? 40?) so it would reward high streaks? Kind of like the second axe, but recurring and only if you can manage a high combo? Anyway love the game but I don't think I'll be touching it anymore until there's an update.
Been busy with Combo Queen lately but I've been checking this thread. Unfortunately I'm seeing a lot of posts about things I've already answered. Game development is time consuming but I'm finally wrapping up version 1.0.2. I'm not going to list everything that has changed but I'll list the things people have been complaining about. Changes: - Difficulty balances - Timing hit zones for attacking and parrying will be opened up a little bit but will tighten up at a slightly faster rate than before as your combo goes up. - Gem rates have been increased. Additions: - Damage will now scale depending on how accurate you are with your hits. You'll be able to tell by text confirmations: Perfect, Great, Good, Okay. - Hit counter to see how many hits Queen has left. There are more things that have been added and changed. There's even a new item but I will not reveal anything more. Please be patient for the update as Apple still has to review and accept it before it goes live. We're also working on outfits for Queen which will only be for aesthetics. This will come in a later update. Thank you all again for playing Combo Queen and giving feedback!
@tmgalex Thanks for the heads-up and update! Looking forward to the new content and changes. A little sad there won't be any costumes in the coming update but that's OK - it's more than reassuring to know things are being worked on. Cheers!
Cool, I hope you'll also squash that bug I posted. Another one: i've ha d situations where the training dummy attacked and killed me as well. It started with the red warning icon and corresponding 'scraping' sound that you sometimes get when an enemy launches a second wave of attacks after finishing an attack streak. Question: will you also up the level cap, or will it stay at 9999xp/level 20? Observation: maintaining a combo after using the filled up combo meter seems super hard, i can hardly ever pull that off. Am I alone in that or do other people have the same experience?
Yeah I've had that same problem DeNappa. I feel like if I don't kill them during that combo I'm definitely going to get hit when the combo ends.
Those bugs have been addressed and fixed. Hopefully it doesn't start any others. We're looking to increase the level cap along with new areas and monsters but that won't be happening any time soon as Combo Queen needs to build a bigger user base. We're not some huge company that can just keep adding content. Just an indie game developer with one designer and a small budget. After a Combo Burst is finished it is hard to get back into the combo. It's meant to be hard so that it's not exploited. Looking at the leaderboards for the highest combo, it looks like quite a few people have been doing it based off of those numbers. I'm able to continue the combo myself as well but then again, I'm the developer that has been playing it non-stop for almost 8 months now, haha.
Yeah, the problem is proably the change in pace makes you lose your rhythm. Took me a while to get used to the timing of the 6 strike axes as well when I bought it.
Version 1.0.2 has been released on the App Store! Additions/Changes: - Timing hit zones for attacking and parrying have been opened up a little bit but will tighten up at a slightly faster rate as your combo increases. - Damage will now scale depending on how accurate your hit is with text confirmations: Perfect, Great, Good, Okay. - Decreased exp rates for lower level monsters to let players adjust to the game at a better pace. - Gem drop rates have been increased. - Balances to monster difficulties. - Properly synced up attack sounds with monster attack animations. They were slightly off. - Hit counter that tells you how many hits Queen has left. - Weapons now have speeds for a whole new level of gameplay. - New Item: Pink Lotus - Lures out weaker monsters but receive 75% less gems and no exp. Great for users that want to practice. - Slightly increased drop rate for Golden Essence. - Users will now be able to achieve a total high score that will be based off of their performance in the game along with new Game Center leaderboard to compete for the highest score worldwide! - Sharing will now also share an awesome picture of Queen with all of your high scores. Every time you get a new high score youll receive an extra 100 gems for sharing. - Lowered cost of Gold Essence to 400 gems. - Queen will now automatically stop at the slots minigame and dungeon entrance to give the user time to react. - Many bug fixes. Thank you all again for your feedback!
Downloading now, the changes sound great on paper. I'll have to see how I feel about the "good, perfect, etc" stuff though
All I can say to the update is WOW!!! All sorts of awesomeness. For those who were finding the difficulty curve to be too much, your day has come! That, plus more gems dropping = frickin awesomeness. And thanks Devs for adding the ability for the queen to stop at the caves and mini games ## I'll finally be able to check them out
Update has exceeded my expectations by miles. God I love this freaking game so damn much. Devs, epic update!!!!! This game rocks!!!!
