1 Response

1. Glazius Says:

   Storyline
   Design
   Gameplay
   Detail

   @GlaziusF

   Running this on my spine/regen level 50 solo monster, all bosses no AVs 2 heroes at +0.

   —

   Okay, mysterious portal, distress beacon, let’s go investigate. Why not?

   Interesting custom group. Kind of odd that you’ve got minions in full armor next to minions in their civvies with a few pads on.

   Hmm.

   Lieutenants and Gunners seem to be worth some XP, but the Commander, Field Marshal, Crowd Control Unit, and Pyro Unit don’t seem to be worth any at all.

   So, which anagram do you want do go with here? A unit description says “Elides Norm”, but the units are talking about “Mesisen”.

   The clues are a bit divided on this, too.

   Interesting way of getting out, and thank you for not spawning vocal patrols once the hostages are gone.

   So, a brutal earth with only a few survivors. Portal Corp likes evacing them to mainline Earth in these kinds of situations.

   —

   But apparently I’m getting into freedom fighting. Well, alright. Even if it is a T.R.A.P.

   So, setting bombs in a factory. Dear.

   Oh, it’s inside. That’s a bit of a help.

   The bombs are placed before I even catch sight of the boss. Were they all set to “middle”? Four of them seem to have been set up in the same room, but that’s probably just weird luck.

   No XP for dropping the foreman, either. And you may be interested to know that you can use $himher in dialogue to put in the appropriate pronoun.

   I get a rather stilted summary of what I’ve just done as a mission exit clue. I can’t say I like that style very much, as I generally know what I’ve just done, even several days after I’ve just done it.

   …the mission exit popup says “After you rescued The Answer himself and some T.R.A.P soldiers ran off down a nearby alley to escape the Rapture soldiers rapidly arriving to the rebel’s hideout.”

   That doesn’t a) make sense or b) relate to anything I actually did in the mission.

   —

   Ah. I have a feeling it’s this next one, then. I’m going… somewhere… to meet up with the Answer.

   Awfully quiet in here. It’s cliche. A bit TOO cliche. Ah well, down the rabbit hole.

   And at the end of it all is a Toxic Tarantula with some Municipality thugs around him. To the rescue! (I like the explanation, by the by.)

   Ah, now everyone’s in Arachnos gear. There are Rebels and… uh… Flying Columns? (Crab Spiders. Generally not known for their flying.)

   And boy, they’re handing the Municipality its collective rear end in a sling! (Maybe you should tip the fights a little more if they’re supposed to be losing?)

   Unfortunately it means the victors clog the tunnels and The Answer can’t get back out again, but it’s not a required escort so it’s just irksome rather than teeth-grittingly frustrating..

   The raid commander seems to be just a renamed Commander, so no XP for him either.

   …wait, dude thinks soldiers followed me to the hideout? The lock was forced when I got here.

   —

   Anyway, time to assassinate a political leader. But he’s oppressive, so it’s okay. Right?

   Anyhow, he’s got some squads I need to take out first, which are led by, apparently, Commanders, who are. again, worth no XP.

   Huh. I reach the rooftop with 2 commanders to go, but I can’t find them anywhere, so I go back to search inside.

   Okay, I find one on an overhang. It would help if they SAID something or had a pose other than “one guy on a cardboard box”.

   TWO! On exactly the same overhang in exactly the same kind of room! (the corridor-y one with the large balcony on one long wall, if it matters)

   If they said something I’d have spotted them much quicker.

   So I hope the Architect has decided to feel climactic and head back for the roof, even though it’s a gamble whether anything will spawn here.

   And whaddaya know! He does!

   Also the royal guard have the old version of the name.

   As does the clue I get on dropping him, which mentions something he said during his speech. …that I didn’t actually hear in his boss dialogue.

   I do get some invasion plans, though. Well, this just got personal.

   —

   So the briefing for next mission mentions Mesisen. Again. Man, you really need to check this for consistency, unless it’s just supposed to be random.

   Huh. Actually the “big boss” is kinda chilling in a corridor well before the end room on this tech map. Ah well, time to take him out.

   The clue he drops on his death just says “uble”. …that’s the title. No text.

   Uh, what?

   So maybe he’s in the boss room NOW. …nope.

   Going back down a floor, then.

   Back down TWO floors…. he’s in the first room?

   This time the clue I get (before the one that just said “uble”) is telling me he was a body double of some sort.

   And NOW I check the boss room… and there’s Nemesis fist-pounding.

   Now, I’ll be honest here - I read someone else’s review of the arc quite accidentally, so I knew this was coming. But… well, I guess you get it from running up to him and trying to decipher the boss dialogue while he’s trying to clobber you.

   I generally was a bit too busy trying not to die from a whole bunch of build ups on the “royal guard”.

   And when I return to the real world, I get a note from Nemesis telling me that I have been trolled, I have lost, and to have a nice day.

   (Also the ending clues for the mission seem to be in the first person for some weird reason.)

   There’s… not even a souvenir to be had? Dang.

   —

   Storyline - *. You know what I hate? I get to the end of a storyline that turns out exactly the way the author wants it to every time and somebody calls my character a chump for getting there. At least in the general sense, I want to see how the story ends, but I don’t want to feel like a chump. These are generally not very contradictory desires.

   But here’s round 2. Nemesis maintained an entire city, or at least several prominent buildings, in order to distract a single hero for a couple of hours? That seems like vastly off-kilter risk vs. reward.

   Here are two things I wouldn’t mind as much. Both of them involve the people I save being real but also a Nemesis plot to some degree:

   1) The whole thing was a plot of some other dimension’s Nemesis. Maybe even THAT dimension’s Nemesis and he hadn’t got ’round to really good clones yet. Nemesis provided TRAP with their interdimensional beacon, and at the end he thanks me for putting him one up on his competition.

   2) This was actually a partial plot by this dimension’s Nemesis, but after it was proving unworkable he decided to have a hero come in and break it up. If the hero fails, hey, defeated hero. Bonus!

   Design - **. The royal guards were a bit unreasonable. A giant wave of Build Up going off is no way to start a boss fight. The other troopers were actually mostly reasonable, except for the part where only two out of the six gave any XP at all. And those Commanders were busting out Full Auto, so it’s not like they were pushovers. But they were missing some standard power from one of their sets, and were therefore worthless in terms of XP. Have a look at that, maybe switching the Pyros over to Fire Blast and calling them Firebat-style hand flamers.

   Gameplay - ***. Big problems were backtracking over Marchand’s Office to find all the backup squads (a little dialogue on them would fix that) and backtracking through the final lab to fight the second form of the end boss (I think he’s front, the bloody-faced one is middle, and the big boss is back; the first two should be reversed.)

   Detail - **. Decide what terrible fake name you want to use for this guy, and use it all the way through - in the clues, in the enemy descriptions, in the dialogue. It just swung back and forth with no rhyme or reason. There’s also a popup exit thing out of place, and a terribly mangled clue in the final mission.

   Overall - **. Needs enemies that aren’t worth NOTHING! ABSOLUTELY NOTHING!, a consistent nomenclature for the guy in charge across the board, and an ending where it doesn’t turn out I just got interdimensonally trolled.

   Posted on December 1st, 2009 at 5:46 pm