I played the first level of Spiral Knights and I like it so far. I'm interested in playing again, this time with ToJ members. I had hoped I'd be able to play the game with a controller, but that doesn't work out very well. Nevertheless, I'm planning on loading SK up again soon.
I'll give you a run down on the game Tek as I played past the tutorial levels and all the way down the first "serious" level, I use the term loosely given it's easy difficulty. I believe I got all the way to the first boss' doorway... then the server reset. FYI a 30 minute warning is not enough to solo finish a dungeon you are in the middle of XD. I did read the wiki a bit but I will try to make this more concise. Your choices for gameplay are...
1. Grind levels with/without a party.
2. Play the auction house and energy markets.
3. Alchemy.
Since alchemy is really just a thing to spend your loot on and a thing to get loot to sell from you will be spending all your time on the other two.
The crux of the game is everything in the game costs energy. From entering levels, descending levels, reviving yourself to alchemy it all of it costs energy. Every 24 hours your regular energy refills to 100 (uh haven't verified it but I think regular energy doesn't go past 100 if you wait longer) but there is also a second type of energy. This energy serves the same purpose but may be bought with real money or bought and sold between players with in-game cash. At some point though you will either need a lot of energy to craft the best gear or buy it at the auction house.
Gameplay:
Actual combat is determined by what equipment you've acquired and leveled up. Equipment types are...
Helmets
Armor
Guns
Swords
Bombs
Trinkets
There are several different types of each weapon type which will give you different attacks/stats. Most weapons were situational though (good against this stat wise). This probably makes the fewer non-situational weapons more popular due to the difficulty/cost upgrading multiple weapons. Also given there is an upgrade, that last 30 days, to equip additional weapons slots that makes situational weapons even less popular. I really couldn't say for sure though as I didn't buy another weapon yet. In my play time I spent all 100 of my energy and earned about ~4400 crowns (in-game currency). 100 energy was currently selling at ~4100 crowns so I expect money doesn't come easy in this game. Note I believe I would have earned more had the server had not reset sending me out of the level without the boss prize. You see I had to spend most of my energy on the elevators going down and did not have enough to do it again.
70% of the time my actual fighting boiled down to me backpedaling in circles while patiently wearing down groups with my beginning gun. It takes a while but given the A.I. does not understand the concept of coming from two directions (and frequently got hung in corners against nothing) I predict the tactic will be valid in most of the game's situations. The only occasion I had to change this was when there was a healing enemy in a group and he had to be picked off first. The other 30% was me using my sword which is riskier but quicker. Given enemies teletype their attacks it is easy to as long as you aren't fighting a lot at once or get bored and stop paying attention >.> , <.< . I expect having a party will be necessary in later stages to fight larger groups of more difficult enemies, just don't expect rocket science to be required. As far as the puzzles they were not much of ones. If you've played virtually any other video game in the past you'll be fine.
I did lag slightly in the tutorial levels but this stopped later. If I were to guess the game's addition to Steam has probably spiked it's server traffic and it leveled off as it got later and people went to bed.
Graphics:
It's the WoW coloring trend. Not ugly just not my thing. Of note what stats/bonuses you want will dictate what armor you'll want and thus your appearance.
Bottom Line:
It's possible to get ahead in this game without spending real money but to do so you must play the auction house/energy market and/or grind a lot. I would stress though that both will require the patience to wait and NOT play the game. The auction house/energy market will have you waiting for stuff to sell and maps for your energy to replenish. I actually welcome that compared to a complete grind-fest though, if you choose to, you could just buy energy, grind continually and progress faster XD. Unfortunately, like other grinders, once you've attained wealth and a max character I don't think there is much compelling to actually to do with that character. You don't have a huge world to explore, there aren't pvp centered areas as I can tell, no mini-games and the story, what there is of it, is forgetable.
Also of note the Steam description of the game says "The clockworks cycles levels to explore in real time. Every moment of every day changes the world". The mazes are suppose to change depending on the time of day you play them but I doubt this will change the experience that much given the simplicity of the levels (at least the beginning ones). Hopefully it means they are infinitely, procedurally, generated but it sounds more like it has a set number of levels that swap out. I think playing this game while chatting with party members is a must otherwise I see it getting boring. Still if you are looking for a grinder you could actually get ahead in, without paying, this could be it. Hey I got a TF2 hat out of it so I came out " a-head"... it's a hat and I came out "a-head" get it... ok moving on.
One last thing if anyone does go to play this game I strongly suggest changing the default keyboard setup before you get used to it (if you use a keyboard that is). I made left click my primary attack/interact button and changed right click to shield blocking. I believe the default setup is intended so people can play without using the keyboard as much. I don't think it works well given pressing X for shield is not intuitive and you cannot really strafe with just the mouse.
I will play it with you some Tek I just don't know if I'll keep playing later.
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