2 Responses

1. @PW Says:

   Storyline
   Design
   Gameplay
   Detail

   I’m afraid I just can’t get past how formulaic the “get 4 objects to kill the boss” plot is; it’s a very generic fantasy plot. I’d suggest you rework the plot to be a little less formulaic, if possible.

   The fact that the contact basically lies to you to get you to do the first mission, then expects you to do 4 more missions for him anyway, is a big negative. He also reveals that he’s a hero, but the fact that he’s a hero is never relevant in the rest of the plot.

   I found the dialog to be rather awkward. You don’t really meet any recurring characters in the story (other than the contact); even the Three Fold King himself never appears until the very last act, so you never get an opportunity to understand him and/or hate him enough to want to beat him. Missions 1, 2 and 5 were all too generic in construction (go in .. defeat boss .. mission over) and needed more of interest in them; especially the last mission, which should be a more dramatic finale. Mission 4 was better because it had more clues to find, but the way the crates were defined as mission objectives was very confusing and unintuitive.

   I wish I had some more positive things to say, since you clearly put a lot of work into this. Sorry!

   Posted on June 16th, 2009 at 12:58 pm

2. Glazius Says:

   Storyline
   Design
   Gameplay
   Detail

   @GlaziusF

   Playing this on a low-20s Peacebringer, +0/x1 with bosses on.

   —

   Hmm. No contact description. Might want to update that just a bit.

   Hmmmm again. I have a feeling I know how this is going to end, but alright, let’s go stop the CoT from taking over the world.

   The boss is invisible (or at least less visible, as Steamy Mist doesn’t seem to completely overwrite the standard perception radius) and responds to one of the many battles that starts up, so his voice seems to be coming out of nowhere. …his description claims he’s after a mace, but I came here looking for a runestone.

   The minions represent the well-known trio of fire, death, and stabs, but the boss is some kind of ice/stormer and that means he has all the slows. All of them. Can’t really go non-dwarf as he spams iceblock pretty well, and he doesn’t really have any kind of damage output to speak of, so the fight is a protracted affair of staring at powder-blue pixels until they become slightly larger.

   Huh. Okay, seems my contact wasn’t being straight, but not in the way I thought. I’m talking to the secret idea of a guy whose powers are pretty much ineffective against these guys.

   —

   Next stone. …the opening popup mentions the sea, but the relevant parts of Salamanca are kinda landlocked and behind a war wall.

   Man. Hate trying to find things on this map, but fortunately they’re all on the long curve by the large lake near Salamanca.

   Hmm. Maybe my earlier premonition still holds. My contact seems to think we’re turning back the king, but I found a journal that indicates he’s already been summoned.

   —

   Anyway, time to rescue some hostages.

   The captive Legacy mention how lucky it is that I knew what to do. …because apparently they didn’t think to blast these underlizards in the face.

   For some reason I also pick up a map from the Lemurians in addition to a stone from the safe? My contact doesn’t really mention it.

   —

   So we’ve been doing stuff that might be set in Croatoa, and now it’s time for Arachnos in a Rikti bunker. Kind of weird to have something so out of place.

   Anyway, it looks like you were trying to go for multiple crates with some distractions and some real elements. You can do this by naming all the plural entries for the glowie the same thing. (You may also want to name any notable single elements the same general thing, as in “search the last crate” as they can be unreliable when going to plurals.)

   —

   And now it’s time for the showdown. Teeny little map, not much to do other than head for the end room and fight the end boss. He seems to be a powerful melee combatant wielding a notable hammer — is this the “mace” that description in the initial mission was referencing?

   Anyway, I pop a Shivan and distract him with a large glowing lobster until he goes back to the grave.

   —

   Storyline - ***. Pretty standard - obtain power crunches, break evil’s face. It seems to hint at an eventual contact betrayal that never really materializes, mostly because my contact is keeping a couple things secret from me - first his hero identity, second the source of his power. And I can kind of understand the first, but not really the second.

   I guess a bit of the problem is that Lemuria is kind of stepping on the Circle’s toes as the ancient underground civilization that’s rising up. So I’m looking at a complete blank slate and there really isn’t anything in-world that my contact could use to vouch for himself. I’d suggest finding some kind of hook so that I don’t just have to trust a complete unknown.

   Design - **. The customs are generally easy enough to tell apart. About the only odd wrinkle is that the low-level fire guys look a lot like the low-level stab guys.

   But mission 4 is just drastically, drastically off-tone with what has so far been a mystical mission arc set in Croatoa. Arachnos in a Rikti bunker?

   And the arc as a whole has kind of a ridiculous level range. At the very least, you can now set the lower bound for the arc to offer a more automatic indication of the minimum level.

   Gameplay - ***. The boss fight in the first mission was a giant waitathon. I had no powers, he had no damage. That’s never fun. The stock opposition turned out fine, but be careful with Build Up and similar boosting powers on the bosses, especially the final boss, who’s a pretty heavy bruiser even without the giant damage spike to open the fight.

   Detail - **. The boss in the first mission has a description referencing some kind of mace he’s looking for. That never materializes, though the Threefold King does fight with warmace style. We pick up a journal in the second mission indicating that the Threefold King is alive again and my contact never really notices. There’s a map as an exit clue for the third mission that doesn’t seem to come into play at all. And I think all we get out of mission 4 is a statue, not the fourth runestone. It feels a lot like the story was rewritten at some point, but some of the map details and such were missed in the process.

   Overall - ***. I’m inclined to round up because some of these issues are related to things done after this arc was published, but even absent those, this arc needs a light pass for balance and a deeper pass for consistency.

   Posted on March 2nd, 2011 at 6:40 pm