1 Response

1. Glazius Says:

   Storyline
   Design
   Gameplay
   Detail

   @GlaziusF

   Running this on a mid-20s stone/stone brute, +0/x2 with bosses on.

   —

   Ah, Tarixus. How’s it floatin’, dead man?

   Mission 1: Defeat the Warriors Three. Well, this is going to be a short arc!

   Nah, probably not. But I am getting involved to make the needle in this power struggle point due Arachnos.

   Okay, so I defeat the three warrior bosses who use unconventional (for the Warriors) weaponry — nice touch, by the way — and find their assault plans. Time to go zombie-stomping.

   As an aside, since there’s only one clue in the mission you don’t need to make it and the end-of-mission clue say basically the same thing.

   —

   Hope this is a small map, because the briefing makes it sound like I have to wax everything in it.

   Okay, pretty compact, actually. Battles going on, pretty interesting, but a couple things: first, the NPC dialogue radius is pretty big these days so there’s no need to have multiple battles with identical dialogue. One talky battle (per unique talk) and silent battles for the remainder will do fine. Second, battles will pretty much always start where you can’t even see them, so battle dialogue that assumes anybody new is there doesn’t make much sense.

   The Pantheon talk about protecting a Coven, which doesn’t make much sense. I think that’s the enemy group that shows up every Halloween chasing the Malleus Mundi.

   The closing-mission clue once again recaps the single clue you get from grabbing the only glowie.

   —

   Okay, so some nobody has absorbed the power from out the crystal and is going to be a big threat in our taking it back from the Warriors.

   I say “Bring it”.

   The guy actually goes down pretty quickly… is that Energy Aura he’s got on? Well, that’d be why, though it does fit a temporary arcane powerup.

   Anyway, the closing briefing says something about the Mu restoring the power to the recovered crystal, but as far as I know we haven’t actually recovered the crystal yet. Was it supposed to be a glowie on the boat?

   —

   Heh. Tarixus decides we should give the Warriors a nice present for their troubles. I’m all for that. So, let’s steal something from the Banished Pantheon.

   In the sendoff Tarixus calls them “witches” but the Pantheon magicians are all “shamans”. “Witches” can refer to either the Coven or the Cabal, neither of whom seem to be involved here.

   Hmm. According to the crystal clue I drop it in a protective container of some sort. Now that we have opening clues this would be a good opportunity for one.

   —

   And now to place it. The ending room looks a bit empty, so I get ready for a fight when I place the crystal.

   Well well well, look who broke out. They yack as they go down about spoiling the trap I’ve set, and I find some sort of midnighter amulet on one of them.

   Apparently even though I’ve bopped them one they still have the energy to spring the trap meant for Odysseus. Faithful to the end. Tarixus is pretty satisfied with us going 1-0-1 against the Warriors, and the arc’s over.

   —

   Storyline - *****. The story is a pretty simple one, but I’ve marked it highly because it does something that in my experience is unusual in Mission Architect: legitimately builds to a head in mission three and achieves closure over the last two missions through repetition of story elements even though the “big boss fight” is over and done with.

   There’s nothing unusual about what goes on, save perhaps for the intervention of the Midnight Squad, (but then again they’re feeling their druthers a bit so I can dig it) and it’s a decent reason for a villain to get involved butting heads with the Warriors.

   Design - ***. One of the good things about the Warriors is that their costume design is so spartan (if you’ll forgive the pun) that it’s easy to make customs that look like they fit in, and these customs certainly manage that, while still being distinguishable from the rank-and-file due to combat auras that Warriors don’t have.

   There are some places to deposit opening clues now that the technology exists, but more than that there was an awful lot of duplication - doing a single clue-yielding objective to complete the mission and acquiring both its clue and a mission complete clue that said essentially the same thing. This isn’t really necessary, except perhaps for space concerns which aren’t relevant here.

   Also, I couldn’t pick out anything I did on the cargo ship in mission 3 that actually accomplished the plot objective of retrieving the power crystal. Unless the EB had it stuffed down his pants or something.

   Gameplay - ****. Stock enemies for the most part, and reasonable customs otherwise, in missions with sensible geometry and therefore not a whole lot of running around trying to find stuff to do. Word of caution: now that you can peel powers off enemies individually, you might want to take Aim, Build Up, and powers that work like them (especially Rage) off of bosses, as the scales end up a bit too punishing.

   Detail - **. This is where the arc falls down. In addition to some more specific concerns, it has a tendency to use German/18th-century capitalization, capitalizing all nouns of any sort, which makes for a choppy read and the occasional bit of confusion. The names for the customs and the way the arc characterizes various enemy groups don’t make a lot of sense.

   The Warrior custom bosses all have names based on their various weapons of choice, which seems a bit at odds with the group’s roots in mythic symbolism. The titular three custom bosses - an archer, a brawler, and a dagger master - could stand to have more mythical names, say Apollo, Cratus, and Hermes, or if you can find some mythological trio of strength, speed, and brains (archery equals brains because you have to aim, you see) among the Argonauts or in the Iliad that would work too. The super-Hewer, gone mad with power (as you do) could call himself simply “The Axe”.

   While the game occasionally uses “coven” as a collective noun for the Banished Pantheon, this can cause confusion with other enemy groups who are much more witchy than the shamans of the Pantheon. I’d suggest calling a shaman a shaman and referring to the BP as “cultists” in collective, having the minions talk about protecting the crystal or serving a boss Spirit as appropriate for the map.

   Overall - ***. An arc that feels in large part like it could have come out of the game, with a simple but novel (in my experience with MA at least) story progression. However, it’s marred by the occasional oversight with clue presentation, and generally unpolished text.

   Posted on December 27th, 2010 at 6:39 pm