1 Response

1. Glazius Says:

   Storyline
   Design
   Gameplay
   Detail

   @GlaziusF

   Carrying this through with the level 50 spine/regen scrapper, all bosses no AVs 2 heroes at +0.

   I think it’ll turn out to be a wise choice.

   —

   …I’m doing a mission chain for Nemesis. Uh… this arc’s alignment Heroic, right? Yeah, that’s how it’s listed.

   Hoo boy.

   Let’s see what the big brass man has to say.

   Just so you know, Nemesis doesn’t have much of a reputation for being, uh, trustworthy, or straightforward. If he’s telling you to do something, your best bet is to do the exact opposite. …or wait, he might be planning on you to do that, so it’s probably better to pretend you never heard him.

   This place is full of amped clockwork. None of them are saying or doing anything special, and for some reason there’s an Arachnos terminal in here I have to interact with. (If you want more standard consoles they’re wall details.)

   …wait, what? The Clockwork King has a bank account and he’s still building his army out of scrap?

   Okay, okay, I’ll roll with this.

   —

   …wait, what? Nemesis built the Amps for his own use, but then the Clockwork King took control of them when… Nemesis drove him insane.

   Usually he’s more careful than that.

   More silent Amped Clockwork, a defeat all in a warehouse with plenty of crates to hide little robots, and two clickies later, I find out that…

   Arachnos has commissioned the Clockwork King to build them new robots.

   What?

   Can the Clockwork King even build robots at all?

   And what’s wrong with Black Scorpion, their current builder of new robots? Is he just going to be laid up for months on account of getting magna stoned off of some oil refined from space or something?

   —

   So now I’m planting a bunch of devices that I don’t know what they are to “break the Clockwork King’s control”. Uh huh. Whatever you say, Brassy.

   …t-t-TEN? That’s a lot. That’s as many as five twos.

   Also, you can make glowies transparent to start so they become solid when you activate them.

   Huh. So the Clockwork King… is apparently going to be using this whole project to plant moles in Arachnos.

   …did they even know ANYTHING about this guy when they hired him? I mean, “can psychically control machines” isn’t exactly a big secret.

   —

   So now at Nemesis’s urging I head over to an Arachnos base, clear it out, and find a single new trooper at the top level.

   …I’m kind of embarrassed to say I didn’t get a chance to look at him. What rank is he? I was AoEing down the other members of his spawn and he wilted a while before even some lieutenants dropped.

   Maybe I just got super lucky with crits.

   Oh, and all this time Black Scorpion was paying the Clockwork King to develop stuff! Okay, now everything makes sense. Because Black Scorpion so often doesn’t.

   —

   Huh. If enough troopers are produced they reach a critical mass? Like, these guys are self-replicating? We could be looking at a red-and-black goo scenario?

   And the factory is… an abandoned warehouse.

   Okay, true, if this had been a defeat all on an outdoor factory map I would have blown a gasket.

   …it doesn’t even seem to be a defeat all. At least the navbar doesn’t think so, despite Nemesis’s instructions to leave nothing standing.

   Once again, these glowies should be fading in from transparent.

   For some reason these lieutenants are worth about half what the Arachnos minions were in the last map. And they certainly wilt faster - I’m guessing Arachnos armor is just high lethal resist, and shield defense can’t come close to that.

   Ah, that’s why they’re worth so little - no minions in the enemy group. Maybe no bosses either. If you don’t have any more room for customs, you could use Arachnos tarantulas to fill out the ranks, they’re Black Scorpion’s purview.

   After a good old slugfest, he goes down, cursing my name. Not even a closing clue to show for it.

   As far as Black Scorpion’s opening rant goes, you can use $heshe to put in the appropriate gender.

   And Nemesis tells me good job and he’ll keep me in mind? …uh, who is this guy and what has he done with Nemesis?

   —

   Storyline - *. So… this is Nemesis. The same guy who’s such a giant egotist his elite troops are all robot copies of himself. And he’s trusting me to bring down the Clockwork King and put a stop to Arachnos’ plans because… it’s the right thing to do. Not for any personal gain of his. He doesn’t even say anything about planning to fill in the robotic world-conqueror gap. I mean, the dude does have giant brass ones, enough to just tell a hero about some threat to the world, even though it’d lead to his ascendance, because heroes stop robot threats to the world. But there’s no indication he’s getting anything out of this, or that he’s anything more than GENERIC_HIGH_LEVEL_TECH_CONTACT_05. Which really should not be happening with Nemesis.

   So here are two options for… well, the whole story, really. If the last mission was a Freakshow “plot” instead of a Nemesis plot, then some repentant Freak tells you about the fate of the mind control device - it was salvaged by somebody not them, which leads you through ampwork and a very confused Clockwork King to find out that Arachnos is looking to give their fortunatas robot slaves.

   Or, the last mission was Nemesis but not using mind control at all, just motorized brass bits that looked like scrap but which he could remotely control as part of a Clockwork, and he was using this psychosomatic feedback to drive the Clockwork King insane. But with the device gone, Kingy has access to largely functional Nemesis tech, and Penelope Yinstop wants you to keep him from doing something he’s going to regret with the new power.

   Design - **. The custom group used in the final mission needs proper minions and bosses in it, otherwise it’s a bunch of somewhat difficult fighting with less reward than punching minions. And the new troopers look pretty keen with the red shields but don’t seem to be as resilient as the rest of Arachnos. Also, I don’t really buy “abandoned warehouse” (also in the fifth mission) as a workable robot factory. Maybe if you swapped the maps for the second and fifth missions, and put the first one in an abandoned office or lab or something so you wouldn’t have two missions in a row on the same map.

   Gameplay - ***. I’m not a big fan of whatever scaling puts giant swarms of blues and greens all over the place. It makes defeat alls more frustrating because there’s always some outlier who bolts, and it makes stealthing clickable objectives more frustrating because there’s more things spread around to see and hit you. And the Ampwork are just as bursty as they were last arc, with all the attendant consequences.

   Detail - **. The missions were pretty much empty. Clocky, the prototype, and Black Scorpion were the only ones who ever said or did anything special. This made Nemesis the prime source of information on my plans and the enemies’ motivations, and he has serious credibility problems, to put it lightly.

   Overall - **. This arc inherits some of its problems (the seed of the plot, the Ampwork) from the previous arc, and makes some of its own mistakes (lack of optional objectives or conversations outside the contact, custom group with abnormally low rewards). There’s a lot here that can be productively overhauled.

   Posted on November 13th, 2009 at 4:09 pm