Conglomerate 451 - PC Review

Conglomerate 451 by developer RuneHeads and publishers 34BigThings and 1C Publishing—PC (Steam) review written by Pierre-Yves with a copy provided by the publisher.

Estimated reading time: 4 minutes

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Having taken a look at Conglomerate 451 back in early October, this Cyberpunk, Team Based, First Person Dungeon Crawler with a clone army is finally ready and I’ll be damned if it isn’t glorious. After a botched mission, that you were designed to fail at to test your mettle, you are given a promotion of being Director at an agency designed to clean up the 451 ward of the city Conglomerate. With plenty of cloning options at hand and the ability to research more, your only limitations are how far you’re personally willing to go.

Overall, between the preview and the fully launched version, not much has changed. There’s more in the narrative department and the gameplay is loads smoother as I haven’t had a single bug yet. Otherwise? It plays just as smoothly and offers just as much smooth dungeon crawling than it used to. The major bonus? Conglomerate 451 now has controller support if you feel like just putting your feet up on the coffee table!

Taking it from the top for those of you joining us now, Conglomerate 451 is a first person dungeon crawler that has you select teams of three for missions into the various areas of the district in order to reduce the influence of the companies. Selecting specialists from a variety of backgrounds to get the work done, there's no right answer but you'll soon find strategies with each specialist that either work great for certain enemies or that overall work for you.

Moving through the "dungeons" you'll be taking step by step in similar laid out dungeons that come in a variety of visuals from dirty cyberpunk slums to fancy atriums with pretty colors. Your goals in these locations is what will change and what you find inside will either make you gleefully happy as you uncover more tech points for research, or sweat with dread as your team becomes battered and bruised from the physical attacks and the strain of their cybernetic implants.

The idea of your units needing to heal up and recover isn't a new one but Conglomerate 451 does it well. Only having to deal with physical traumas in the first few weeks, the toxicity levels of your implants only come out to play once you've had time to get familiar with the mechanics and have time to look over what kinds of research that you wanted to specialize in. New tanks for healing physical wounds and new tanks for toxin removals are nice as you can do more units at a time, but, you also want to look into new bonuses for new clones as you're going to need more than one group on hand to send out.

If there had to be a downside to all of this clone business, it would be that clones can die and the experience that they earned goes with them. Yes, you can make new ones. Yes, your new clones are already a notch above their predecessors. But man does it suck. Hell, even if you retire a clone because you have too many others that are in healthier conditions, it doesn't give you anything more than an extra slot in your overall roster.

So a little like The Stranger of Sword City, you'll want to rotate your lower level characters into higher level missions with veteran troops, or, put all of your newbies into low level missions while your higher level heal up. How you approach this is entirely up to you, but you'll want more than one group ready to go and with clones? You can literally have multiple same set up groups on rotation so that it always FEELS like it's the same team.

So overall, especially for fans of dungeon crawlers, Conglomerate 451 is worth it. With plenty of missions with different objectives to keep you going and tons of research to make better and better versions of your squads, taking a city back from evil corporations will keep you both entertained and occupied for quite a while.

Score: 8.5 / 10

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Conglomerate 451 - PC Preview

Conglomerate 451 is something that caught my eye for two reasons. The first is that I absolutely love a good cyberpunk and the other is that I absolutely love a good “old schooled” dungeon crawler. Granting me both, this currently in Early Access project is showing a lot of promise and I can’t wait to see the full version once the bugs have all been ironed out.

Other than having a neat name, it wasn’t until the opening cinematic that Conglomerate 451 made sense. Diving into the 451 Ward of the city of Conglomerate, it’s up to you to clone an army of soldiers in order to remove the corporations from its grounds. The idea of cloning your units fits the ideas behind this dungeon crawler much better than simply hiring a bunch of mercs to do the work. When you’re told that that human life is worth little more than the meat that you buy in a supermarket? Why would any merc take up that job?

So Conglomerate 451 has you take on two roles. The first, and the more principal one, is that of the Division leader that makes the big decisions. Which clones should be “bred”? Which missions should be undertaken? Which technological advancements should be researched or held off on? Each of these will affect how well your party of three fairs once you send them out the front door into violent territories.

Once out on the streets and looking for your goal, you’ll be moving your party in a first person mode, once space at a time. Moving smoothly, yet slowly enough as it is one space at a time, this old schooled style allows you to really take in and appreciate the neon colours and the cyberpunk vibes that the city has going on. While moving about, you’ll have the chance to explore the city a little bit, trade with merchants as long as your reputation is high enough, fight thugs out for your blood and hack terminals for a bonus of your choice if you’re successful.

Hacking was a bit neat. Given a line of code, you have to match it up to its identical partner that is moving through the terminals sub routines. Matching up the first will then bring about a second and then a third at the basic levels. I’m assuming that the harder the difficulty, the more lines that need to be matched. If you’ve managed to hack into the console, you’ll have the choice of several options as to what you want to do. Unlocking doors and showing the entire map are two very useful options especially when you’re either stuck on the other side of a locked door or aren’t sure where to go in order to start your mission.

Missions themselves are kind of neat. While technically starting the moment that you’ve been deployed from headquarters, they only really start once you managed to make it to the destination. Here’s the tricky part. Your team of three is basically on their own the second that you’ve left the front door. This means that if you keep getting into fights and your health is low, you may have a harder time in order to complete the actual mission especially if it’s a takedown requiring you to eliminate xth number of enemies.

To eliminate your enemies, you’ll be doing so in initiative based turns with you’ll whole party in one space and the enemies in front and able to move around. Starting off this didn’t feel fair until I realized that you can move your entire party back several spaces in order to make a buffer between you and them. Merging some other ideas in the mix, on top of the distance between you and the enemy, range plays a large factor in which abilities can be used and the percentage of chance that you have to hit. Having straight up to hit chances lets you know a bit more about what is a good idea and what isn’t.

While I didn’t mind the to hit chances on my enemies, what I really enjoyed was being able to choose where I wanted to hit them. You can target the head, chest, arms and legs. Each has its own chance to hit and regardless of where you’re hitting, if you do hit, you do damage and not just, from what I’ve seen, damage allocated to that body part. What I mean by this is that I’ve flat out taken out enemies shields and health by targeting their right leg since it was closest to be.

Finally, the one thing that I’ll gush a little about is that enemies may not immediately die once you’ve gotten rid of all of their hit points. Often times what will happen is that they’ll fall to the ground and have a chance of being helped back up or healed. This can cause a bit of a distraction to the rest and if they move in closer? That’s the perfect chance to blast them all with an area attack.

Now this isn’t to say that my time with Conglomerate 451 was perfect. There are bugs that can happen but the devs have been up front about it. I may have found a new one though as I got stuck on a mission where the only two people left that I could see to eliminate were so far away and on the other side of a space that I could not get to, that I had to quit the mission and conceded hard won influence back to the corporations that I had taken it from as there was literally no way forward as I couldn't even ride the elevator back downstairs.

With a very solid base in place, Conglomerate 451 is looking pretty good. With different mission types and the ability to expand your clone army’s options by developing the tech and research for it, the design options only help to improve the gameplay’s first person dungeon crawling aspects. I’m looking forward to seeing the final version!

Game Information

Platform:
PC
Developer(s):
Runeheads
Publisher(s):
1C Entertainment
Genre(s):
Dungeon Crawler, Simulation, RPG
Mode(s):
Single Player
Other Platform(s):
N/A

Source:
Provided by Publisher

Article by Pierre-Yves

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Conglomerate 451 Announcement Trailer by 1C Entertainment

Prague, Czech Republic, March 25th, 2019 - Today, 1C Entertainment and developer RuneHeads are excited to unveil their brand new game and an evolution of the classic, first-person dungeon crawler genre, datamoshed together with a cyberpunk twist. Say hello to Conglomerate 451 and goodbye to the limits of your human vessel, because this futuristic RPG will arrive on Steam Early Access (PC) soon.

Embracing its grid-based, dungeon crawling RPG roots, Conglomerate 451 offers players an evolution of one of gaming’s most beloved genres. Tasked with taking down the corrupt corporations that threaten sector 451 of Conglomerate city, establish and manage a crack team of cloned agents, altering their DNA and outfitting them with the latest in high-end cyberlimbs, implants and weaponry to best carve out an edge in this city-wide struggle.

Each encounter carries additional weight, however. Roguelike elements ensure that not only could each mission be an agent’s last, but that even the most inconsequential wound can evolve into a permanent status modifier, changing the way they approach future encounters. This means players will have to leverage everything from hacking and equippable agent skills, to strategic use of their personal R&D department to make it out alive.

Key Features:

• Classic dungeon crawling - Face your enemies in a cyberpunk take on classic, turn-based dungeon crawling gameplay by choosing the best strategy, taking advantage of their weak points and making the most out of your agents' skills
• Manage your resources - Make use of your own personal R&D department to research advanced technology, unlocking new features, powers and options for progression
• More than just body mods - In addition to upgrading weapon and armor proficiencies, augment your body with interchangeable cyber implants that completely change your agent’s skills and utility
• Pain and Trauma system - Even the smallest wounds can have a lasting impact. By taking damage in combat, agents risk generating permanent Traumas that will follow them between missions
• Procedural cyber dungeons - Experience the dungeon crawling you love, mixed with future technology as you take on procedurally-generated dungeons and missions
• If you die in the game... - Each mission could be your last thanks to agent permadeath. Consider every move, because if an agent dies in battle, they will be lost forever
• Hack the world - Enter cyberspace mid-mission and hack your way ahead of the competition to get crucial intel and give yourself the advantage

Conglomerate 451 arrives on Steam Early Access soon, with a full launch planned for later this year. Not only this, but if you’re attending PAX East 2019, don’t hesitate to stop by Booth #19115 and be among the first to get your hands on the game! For more information, be sure to check out the game on Steam and follow RuneHeads and 1C Entertainment on Twitter.

About 1C Entertainment

1C Entertainment is an international group with offices located in Warsaw, Gdansk, Prague, Budapest and Moscow and operating in the segments of game production, distribution and services for video game developers. The company releases video games for all platforms through its global network of partners digitally and in retail. 1C Entertainment has successfully launched over 100 game titles including critically acclaimed series - IL-2 Sturmovik, King’s Bounty, Men of War and Space Rangers. Recent releases include such games as Ancestors Legacy and Deep Sky Derelicts. For more information about 1C Entertainment and their games, please visit the official 1C Entertainment website.

About RuneHeads

RuneHeads is one of the most acclaimed independent game studios in Italy. Founded in 2017 by two industry veterans, it's a team driven by passion of making games they would love to play. For more information, please visit www.runeheads.com 

Article by Susan N.

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