1 Response

1. Glazius Says:

   Storyline
   Design
   Gameplay
   Detail

   @GlaziusF

   Running this on the same DB/Fire brute, +1/x1 with bosses on. Even though it’s not alignment-appropriate.

   —

   Oh, wait, Imperious. He’s equal-opportunity.

   Ancient ruins. Well, it’s not like there are any intact Cimeroran caves.

   Through investigation it seems like this was a workshop of the priests of Vulcan, making some kind of autonomous clockwork creatures.

   —

   Now for a humble peasant village, played tonight by Eleusis. Well, could be worse.

   I rescue a couple of hostages and fight through a clockwork army. Archery/TA and BS/shield minions, DB/SR and elec/kin lieuts. Oil Slick Arrow is kind of annoying, especially when it’s spammed. by multiples, stacking the snare and doing a huge defense debuff.

   Also it looks like one of Romulus’s generals is trying to build some kind of ultimate weapon. That ain’t good.

   —

   Sounds like this is gonna be in the Leviathan caves by the briefing. …oh wait, no. Spirit City. That’s pretty good for a temple given the blue.

   Oil slicks also mess up the hostage rescues, since they count for the things that have to be defeated before the hostage is free.

   Find some pretty powerful hostages, but unfortunately the crystal bug is still in and they stare at a healing crystal midway through the mission.

   The Gold Colossi are BS/Energy Aura, and apparently have Overload. BS is bad just on its own since the -defense cascades to the point of always being hit.

   And with them down, an EB Cim Traitor pops up. He’s easy enough to take out - easier than the colossi at any rate. Perhaps that was deliberate.

   —

   Alright, now we’re conning our way into the courts of hell, but first, we need a relic of Hera’s. Somehow I don’t think this is going to be easy…

   Oh. Only a recolored Hydra? A little gladiatorial fun I suppose, and then some glowie hunts to round things out.

   Everybody in here is some sort of recolor of Solaris, but the variation in skin tone and garments makes ‘em look suitably different.

   —

   Huh. Tartarus looks a lot like spider caves. Good to see them getting some play.

   The disguised Sister Psyche looks pretty sweet, and psy assault/FF is about as good as you’ll get to replicating her mix.

   Oil Slick Arrows cause her to just slip and fall all over the place, though, so I end up taking side passages on my own. Though the only other notable thing in these caves is Ixion, the ElecM/Energy Aura commander… I guess he’d be a threat as an AV but he doesn’t even have Overload like the gold automata (not that I want him to).

   And that’s it. Threat neutralized.

   —

   Storyline - ****. Not to hold it against this arc, but I was kinda hoping I’d find out what Daedalus wanted with the Helmet of Achilles.

   The story’s simple and straightforward, with a little deliberate misdirection about the ultimate enemy and a decent grounding in myth. I’m not really sure what the automatons were ultimately for, though — tools for Ixion to overthrow Romulus, maybe? It may have been mentioned somewhere but it didn’t really make an impression.

   Design - ****. For anybody who’s not going to spawn an AV, the third mission with three EBs is a sight harder than the last one with only one, especially since all the EBs in the third mission can set up a -def cascade and the worst the one in the last mission can do is an end drain.

   It doesn’t really feel like a good final boss as a result.

   The customs are nice stylistically, particularly the guest Tritons in mission 3 and the spectrum of allies in mission 4, and the powers are reasonable. but the end isn’t very satisfying.

   Some of this is because of the Oranbega crystal bug taking away allies in the third mission, admittedly. There’s not a lot you can do about that, aside from picking a different map, but it’s a pretty good choice, and there aren’t many good alternatives I could think of. The Temple of the Waters has its own set of problems.

   Gameplay - **. Really, this is mostly down to Oil Slick Arrow. It messes with my allies, it slows down the process of freeing captives, and it means I have to try and pull my way free of it or basically take twice the damage. Also it’s bugged so that my own attacks light it up to hurt me.

   The gold automata are, I realize, supposed to be pretty substantial challenges, but you might want to give them invuln rather than energy aura for variety with the end boss, though leave the tier 9 out of the equation in any case. Their broadsword, and the broadsword/dual blades on the customs, can set up a cascading -defense loop, where base defense gets eroded enough for attacks to always hit, and because attacks are always hitting, base defense never recovers. Real pain for melees.

   Detail - ***. Not a lot of extra stuff lying around, aside from a few battles in the third mission and some excellent flavor patrols in the fourth. I realize the automata are supposed to be silent, or at least not have the power of speech, but you can give them a little *click*whirr* and that’d be fine.

   It’d also stop me from rounding a blind corner in the third map and running smack on into a gold one. That wasn’t a very fun surprise.

   Also the briefings are kind of jagged-edged, with single linebreaks that really don’t achieve any kind of separation. Use double linebreaks or none at all. I think this may have contributed to me missing whatever indication you may have given about the ultimate purpose of rebuilding the automata.

   Overall - ***. This is down to annoying power selection (especially Oil Slick Arrow, which is practically guaranteed to come out with every spawn of custom enemies) more than to any particular deficiency in the plot. Taking out OSA (or rejiggering the customs in such a way as to make it rarer, maybe putting it on a lieut or vastly increasing the number of minions, though taking it out would probably be easier) and polishing the briefings so they’re not all fractured at the right edge would both help push this up.

   Posted on August 18th, 2010 at 11:08 pm