2 Responses

1. Desmodus Says:

   Storyline
   Design
   Gameplay
   Detail

   A very nice storyline, especially for mid-level magic heroes. I really like the idea of tying together the stories of the Midnighters, Cabal and Legacy Chain.

   The final mission has some allies which were pretty useless in my run, but I think that was just the AI and the fact that my blaster and all the enemies were fighting at range, so the allies a bit behind me never saw the enemies. In any event, the allies are far more thematic than necessary, so it was never an issue.

   My only other desire would have been to learn a bit more about the anti-magic crusader enemies in the arc. The description indicates that they were borrowed from another arc by another author, so I can understand why this author didn’t want to focus on them too much, but a few sentences by the contact or one of the hostages might have made things a bit clearer.

   Overall, highly recommended.

   Posted on July 3rd, 2009 at 9:50 pm

2. Glazius Says:

   Storyline
   Design
   Gameplay
   Detail

   @GlaziusF

   Running this on a high 20s mind/kin controller, +0 x1 with bosses on.

   —

   The contact laments what the kids these days call magic and sends me back in the day.

   (She calls me a Magic hero, and then goes on to lament magic practitioners. I know about $origin, but is the rest of it conditional? I’m curious about that.)

   What does it mean to be a hero?

   No, seriously, it’s up there in the title bar but with all this infighting I can’t see anything that might apply. Looks like the proto-Midnight Squad fighting the Inquisition and the Cabal.

   Ah, okay. Looks like they’ve found someone who weighs the same as a duck. I turn them into newt-brains. They don’t get better.

   And there’s the aspect of the pillar my contact sent. Looks like the Inquisition noticed it, and they and the incoming ambush attempt to shatter it. Fortunately my middle name is “lockdown”.

   —

   Damn. I can fix all this infighting in the space of one mission?

   Oh. Okay. Negotiations.

   “High priestess”? Odd title for somebody in the Cabal. You could go with “respected elder”, or “leader”, which is what Katie calls Mary MacComber.

   Anyway, one quick sweep later in the root cave, we’ve got somebody for the moot.

   —

   Peachy. The Legacy Chain have gone all puritan. Again. Well, might as well storm in and rearrange some heads from the inside.

   My contact’s on the first floor. She says there’s some kind of attack in progress, but I don’t see anything new on the navbar.

   Also she’s just a witness. Pity. I love passin’ out speed boost to allies. They just zip all over the place.

   Oh. There’s the attack. A silent ambush, which pancakes me while I’m alt-tabbed. That’s one of the reasons ambushes have dialogue: to let you know not to do that.

   Looks like the Inquisition have either survived to the modern day or all got taken over by Oranbega. I’m not willing to rule out either one yet.

   I suppose a Herald Man would just be redundant, wouldn’t it?

   Anyway, I’m expecting my Legacy buddy to chip in, but nope. He’s noncombat too.

   …a bump on the head, description? Really? It’d make sense if these Heralds could somehow seal somebody’s ability to do magic.

   Anyway, the Earth Legacy’s out now.

   —

   Aw hell. A 30-minute timed mission with three escorts in Oranbe-

   No? Everything went fine?

   Except now the Midnighter Club is under siege. Naturally.

   The leader talks about finding their quarry, but I have no clue what he means.

   Also I actually have no clues thus far, and this is mission 4.

   So the Heralds have found the source of druidic magic and now they’re going deer-hunting.

   —

   I’m not quite as optimistic about things as my contact is. We’ll see how people behave when there isn’t a giant obvious threat to huck spells at.

   Regardless, allies are fun to have. Let’s mission!

   Huh. An abandoned lab? Was this some sort of safehouse, or has he gone to ground?

   One problem with allies: as a mind controller pretty much nothing attacks so the ally AI doesn’t kick in either.

   “The Horned God” is not actually a Tuatha as I was expecting, but… a Midnighter with a stock description. His dialogue does, however, confirm my suspicions about my contact.

   Who all of a sudden confesses a love spanning generations? That’s… out of nowhere, and not in the good way.

   You know what I was curious about? How you can be the foundations of an entire religious tradition and at the same time basically be made of tissue paper.

   —

   Storyline - ****. The only big problem I have with the story is actually the last mission’s tie back to the first mission. On the face of it, it provides some nice symmetry, but here’s the problem: the thing that unites the Triskelion at the end is the threat from the Heralds to one of the pillars of their magical tradition. But in the first mission, among all the internecine fighting, are the Heralds, threatening one of the pillars of their magical tradition! Did I just cause this whole mess in the first place by getting her free before anybody realized what was going on? (Also you’d think the Heralds might have picked a slightly earlier time when the Midnight Squad was all fusion-bombed to come out of hiding.)

   Also, the secret love out of nowhere thing feels… uh, like it comes out of nowhere.

   Design - ***. This isn’t based on the enemy design, which is pretty distinctive and only really a bit of a head fake in that all the modern Heralds have flaming green eyes, which is a prominent feature of the Circle of Thorns. The power sets are pretty reasonable, too - really, it just felt like fighting Council, to a certain extent.

   Not based on the map selection either. People have reported problems with the Midnight Squad map, spawning under the world and such, but I haven’t had problems yet. Knock on wood. The maps are pretty reasonable for what they’re supposed to be.

   The problem is that this arc paints itself into a corner with objectives. Mission 3 involves escorting a Legacy Chain boss through the length of a map, with some bosses popping up to make the trip interesting. He can’t be targeted — I can see why, because he’s basically the pillar on which the Legacy Chain’s goodwill rests — but it also means he can’t help against a boss gauntlet. I would like the mission better if it had a premise that would let this guy help me fight.

   And Mission 5 involves the two crucial and fragile pillars of the Triskelion’s magical traditions. One fights as a minion, the other not at all, and there aren’t even any boss spawns. The Cabal and Legacy Chain bosses help fight, but against a completely trivial resistance. I can see why this would happen, too, why there wouldn’t be some end elite boss or whatever — it wouldn’t make much narrative sense for the pillars to bite it as a result of casual area-effect damage or whatever. But because of those mechanical consequences of the premise, the last mission seems like a bit of an anticlimax, more of an extended cutscene than an important fight.

   Gameplay - ****. The third mission has the potential to throw more bosses in your way than the rest of the missions put together, and it gives you two people to lead around who can’t help you at all.

   Also, the patrols and fights in the last mission and the fights in the first mission have a way of ranging over into you. It’s generally not too bad, but given that this can bring the multiple bosses in the first mission down on you, maybe you could tone them down to a bunch of lieutenants and a single boss.

   Detail - ***. No clues to speak of. (No description on the Horned God, either, but that’s minor.) This story handles most of its exposition in the contact briefings, and while it is pretty simple I’d like to find the occasional thing like the Midnight Squad roster the Heralds were searching for, or any information tying the Heralds to the Inquisition, even if it’s just like notable pieces of iconography.

   I did like the fake-out in the fourth mission, but I disliked the lack of clues even more.

   Overall - ***. An arc with a fairly solid story and some simple but functional enemy designs, which could stand to toss a clue or two my way, and perhaps needs to be rethought a bit so that the plot can have less mundane mechanical consequences.

   Posted on March 16th, 2010 at 11:19 pm