1 Response

1. Glazius Says:

   Storyline
   Design
   Gameplay
   Detail

   @GlaziusF

   So here’s a rereview, since apparently the original edition of the mission was a mistakenly uploaded beta version with many, many things wrong with it.

   (El_F, can you zero the earlier ratings?)

   (Not quite, but I can combine your “before” and “after” and keep your final ratings. -El)

   Running with the same character on the same difficulty, calling out notable changes with big comments in one block at the end.

   —

   M1 briefing: “You tried to reists but my will was stronger” — this is troubling for two reasons. First, it’s spelled “resist”. Second… yay arc where I’m a mindless meat puppet. Ah well, blades swing the same whatever happens.

   M1 contact-bothering text: “Your rewards will be great, I guarentee it!”. “Guarantee”.

   M1: I still don’t know what the person I’m supposed to run off with looks like.

   M1: Also still bugs me that Longbow are calling Helen Drake “the woman”. They know her husband’s name.

   M1: Heh. Yeah, this time the outdoor map picked the kidnap point that’s less than 100 yards from the truck. Not even any enemies in the way.

   M2: Ah, midnighters. Nothing like losing a handful of powers in the middle of an arc to make a body feel loved. At least it’s pretty much the shortest possible map.

   M2: Ha! One of the midnighter idling animations is drinking tea. That’s just wonderful.

   M2: So… what was in the other chests? Were they empty? Did they have fenceable artifacts? Do I not care because I’m a demon meat puppet?

   M3: The arc description doesn’t say defeat all, so I’m hopeful. Oh! It’s just an oranbega crawl. …but doesn’t this put the last three missions inside Oranbega? I’ll see, I’ll see.

   M3: One of the notable features of Oranbega is that it loves cramming assist spawns around blind corners.

   M3: The fight with Escalus is interesting because the room is basically a blind run in with plenty of support, the ambush adds a nice wrinkle because Logbow’s got good support at this level. But exit clue? It’d be more satisfying if I wasn’t the meat puppet of a demon king.

   M3: I’d like to see some poor doomed Circle talking about how they sealed off the relevant portion of the cave.

   M4 briefing: It’s spelled “impregnation”. Honestly I would rather never have corrected anyone’s spelling of that word.

   M4: Once again, the NPC who supposedly wants to talk to me just bolts for the door.

   M4: Uh, exit clue? I’m being dominated here. My will is not my own. You’d think she’d want to do something about that.

   M5 accept clue: Could you just put the enchantress in the mission and have her pass on the buff?

   M5: Vienna spawns down a little side-passage near the beginning. You can’t see the particle effects until you step into the room and it’s a very missable turn. (also Vienna’s rescue clue has no title)

   M5: . . . and the Dark Hellgod is right down the hallway from her? What?

   M5: And as soon as he went down, Liberty Belt Ms. Liberty spawned in right on top of me. Whacked my health down with undodgeable giant damage. DIdn’t really get a chance to do much because my system was choking on a) all the patrols spawning in and b) like 5 copies of identical dialogue.

   M5: . . . IT’S A JAIL MAP?!

   M5: And she’s blocking the path to the books, too, since I’ve been everywhere else. Time to combine everything into lucks and burn a Shivan.

   M5: …she runs. Thank the lord she’s not a required objective. But I don’t even get an insp out of the whole mess? Good luck slowing her down, I mean.

   M5: …and because of all the portals, Vienna gets caught up trying to go through one and her AI just runs her back and forth forever.

   M5: . . . why are Longbow the ones guarding the books? Because they think it’s actually the girdle of Aphrodite? (it’s got a default description on it) I mean, wouldn’t the same enchantress who briefed Escalus bother telling the HEROES what was up with this whole affair?

   —

   Storyline: *. So what’s worse than a story that paints you as a dominated demon puppet? A story that forgets you’re a dominated demon puppet halfway through. (What am I supposed to think? My will’s no match for his, I’m going all “yes master of course master” and he’s praising me like a dog that did a particularly difficult trick, possibly involving ramps.) This is yet another arc that ends on a destructible object going poof. It doesn’t even summon in any ambushes or anything. After what was supposed to be a tough boss fight, winding it down that way just feels like a letdown.

   Design - **. Yeah, uh… when the climactic boss fight leaves me a little bit dinged up and then the nuisance hero pastes me in three shots? Guess who doesn’t seem like that much of a threat. Also this is coming down for stuff that’s probably just normal RNG variation, which may seem unfair, but part of your job is to make sure you’re using maps and allocating objectives such that the RNG doesn’t park the captive 100 yards from the door in a straight line over open terrain, or put the trigger for a whole mission down a missable side passage, or put two chained boss fights in close enough proximity that the player’s getting mauled by the second boss right after the first one drops.

   Gameplay - ***. It was all going so well up until that last map, too. But unavoidable boss death followed by the sudden realization I’m in a damn JAIL MAP often offends.

   Detail - ***. Generally solid spoiler-free work here, though there are some places I noted down where I’d like a little more detail or at least not a default description.

   Overall - **. It’s definitely an improvement on the first draft, but the changes broke almost as much as they fixed.

   ---

   (Glazius’s original review reposted here for context. -El)

   Playing on a mid-40s DB/fire brute, diff 2 for real boss fights.

   Amusing aside - viewed slightly off-kilter I parsed the contact as bare-chested with red suspenders.

   —

   Huh. The Circle may have a reputation for worshipping demons but in my experience they just go through the necessary motions to summon one.

   Now Hellions, those guys definitely worship demons.

   Hey mister? I don’t know how long you’ve been down there but there’s way more than one woman in Steel Canyon. Can I get a picture? A description? Ice sculpture, maybe?

   I mean, the Longbow running around, half of them are women.

   Okay, the guys chattering about Escalus, one of them says “on On Peregrine Island”, and the other one talks about him going through Independence Port?

   Le what?

   Indy port is on the opposite side of the city from PI, check a tram station for a big city map.

   …um. You might wanna give Helen a description that is not a spoiler for the rest of this arc. (at least now we know she falls into the “pure evil” bucket of the great dead/all-powerful/pure evil Summers Memorial Comic Book Wife Sorter)

   I’m glad I got frustrated a couple arcs back, makes it easy to remember the little nook under the construction scaffolding where she actually ends up.

   —

   Yes, the Mu are treacherous monomaniacs, and there’s a lot more people with Mu blood than make it into Arachnos.

   But the Vaults of Mu are some crazy spiritual plane, a reverse run of the (also CoT special) Spirit City map. They’re not what happens when the Mu settle in Oranbega.

   Due to my level any variant groups you had in the custom don’t actually spawn - I know I’m out of range for the midnighters. The result is wall to wall Super Strikers (at high levels they get more lightning powers), who don’t so much chew away at my blue bar as swallow it whole.

   Fortunately I have a little temp stealth saved up for a rainy day.

   More fortunately the books I’m looking for are about halfway through the city itself.

   Yes, yes, I’ve done very well, thank you demonically Liefeldian Mr. Grace.

   —

   Sweet Christmas, brother. You need to take some laughin’ lessons from Vernon von Grun.

   Hmm. It’d be interesting to have a mission that spit out endless waves of attackers that you’d beat when the timer hit zeroh wait that actually happens in Croatoa.

   I suppose this is a good substitute.

   Whoa whoa whoa. I have to wipe out all the Longbow on Thorn Isle in half an hour? That’s not a very good prize!

   Let me tell you how big Thorn Isle is. I spent the entire time at maximum rage, ended with 45 seconds still on the clock, and cleared 400 bonus tickets.

   That is how big Thorn Isle is.

   And that’s without having to backtrack, just running right from one spawn to another! There’s obstructing terrain and sheer drops all over Thorn Isle and the Longbow can fly, so all it would have taken was one runner and that would’ve been it. I would have carved my way through a wall of human flesh for half an hour solid and still failed the mission.

   Maybe this would be a workable replacement: Escalus and N Longbow sorcery/excavation teams (boss spawns), where N is modestly small. After that they won’t have the manpower to break through in time.

   —

   Uh… yay Rosemary’s baby? Apparently I get to go off and have the Best Day Ever in the meanwhile.

   Or not. My spree of destruction through Oranbega destroys no artifacts, disrupts no rituals, and steals no fenceable shinies. Instead I… help someone out of the goodness of my navbar. I mean heart.

   Oh hey, I didn’t know the missing fortune teller scaled so high. But… is she supposed to just have the missing fortune teller description? And shouldn’t she stick around (ally not captive) instead of just bolting if she’s going to discuss stuff with me?

   Curse your sudden but inevitable betrayal! You know, if this guy was gonna wreck the world you’d think they’d spare more than a mook squad of Longbow to take him out.

   —

   Um… description, I’m pretty sure she’s not actually brainwashed here, or she’d be trying to kill me too. Though I guess there’s something going on since she doesn’t remember me, she’s not exactly a pawn of the big man either.

   The destroyer of worlds… isn’t even an EB? Le what? The ambushes come out way too fast here, even with me dealing with them and claw-lady on whatever she feels like his HP just plummets like a stone.

   Also he seems to open with Inferno, which would be a pretty big deal to some other guy without capped fire resist.

   And after that I need to push a Warden down the giant stone stairs. Bit of an anticlimax… and for some reason the clue from him comes before the clue for springing Viv.

   —

   Storyline - *. Vivian being everything bad that happens to women in comics crammed into one little package aside, there’s stuff I really don’t buy here. The Circle is summoning this guy who wants to destroy the world - but they’re actual people, or the spirits of same, and the world is where they keep all their stuff. The hero opposition to this guy, though they apparently know about him and his plans, consists of one actual hero and a big pile of Longbow. And I only find out about him because I stop to help some random person on my rampage through Oranbega? Even if he’s just planning to rip my heart out instead of destroy civilization, that last one’s still a bit of a problem.

   Design - **. A custom group where the level range makes it made entirely of Mu Strikers, a final boss who’s a paper tiger (seriously, the Warden gave me more problems), map choice that’s pretty much the entirety of the “special Circle” maps but without much appreciation of how the maps actually play (the “Oranbega” map is just a giant tunnel run crampathon), and a 30-minute red-and-white armored wall of human flesh with the only notable element being one single vocal boss spawn.

   Gameplay - **. Seriously, that mission on Thorn Isle is absolutely terrible. It made me want to stop playing the arc. The other missions are well enough in their own way, but if I was only doing this casually I would have jumped ship right then and there.

   Detail - *. Checking Viv’s description in the first mission, even though it wasn’t even the same model as her final appearance, spoiled the plot of the whole affair for me.

   Overall - *. Needs a story that doesn’t have the heroes trying to put out a forest fire with an eyedropper, a custom enemy group which will never be composed entirely of Arachnos Mu at any level range, hostage/ally descriptions that make sense for the person they’re supposed to be at the point in the plot they’re supposed to be (the standard fortuneteller description is also out of place since I don’t care about Paragon City), and a third mission that’s anything but “defeat all Longbow on Thorn Isle”.

   Posted on August 19th, 2009 at 11:33 pm