2 Responses

1. Glazius Says:

   Storyline
   Design
   Gameplay
   Detail

   @GlaziusF

   Running this on a high-40s DBlade/Fire brute, +1/x2 with bosses on.

   —

   Hmm. I guess it’s just that nonstandard contact colors don’t show up in the little mini-portraits. I like what you’ve done with the queen.

   Anyhow, the doom drought approaches.

   I wonder what these little crystals are that you can put them in as allies, which is a really nice way to prevent the giant ambush problem.

   Looks like the Circle are trying to do their possession thing in the middle of this horrid drought. …but, uh, I kinda thought Dhahabu Kingdom was in some alternate dimension. Or is it more along the lines of Wakanda?

   Ah, okay. They’ve come over from this world too.

   —

   And the queen goes to talk to an island of all-female oracles. I get to be her guide there and wait outside in a boat. …probably not going to be sitting in the dinghy holding my action the entire time, though.

   Carving my way through a wall of demon flesh, I come upon several oracles, with a nice touch as the queen stops to tend to a wounded one.

   Apparently the Circle are resurrecting some demon lich of drought to try and win her over to their side. Because that always works so well.

   —

   Apparently the CoT have already hit the alarm and now it’s up to me to stop the resurrection.

   …aw geez. Ruladak. This cave’s a real pain unless every enemy’s got some glow on it, because of the zero visibility.

   And it looks like enemies don’t have the glow on ‘em.

   Have the big mummy bosses got Rage on ‘em, or just normal super strength? I seem to be getting tagged an awful lot.

   Hmm. Power Boost and Earth Control mean a quicksand that does about -100% base defense debuff. Might want to look at that.

   The queen’s retinue is otherwise reasonable though I can’t really get a good look at them in this light. …well, not entire reasonable. The Drain Psyche on the basic slaves is kinda punishing, but they don’t know the right range to use it at so it often doesn’t matter.

   After I find a dehydrated Circle mage, the captain of the queen’s guard informs me she’s alive and well. Undead and well. Undead and unwell? Whatever.

   —

   The queen has come out in a small lab in Paragon, which is now a small wrecked lab with drifts of sand in.

   After I free another crystal, the queen pops up. She summons water bearers, storm/iceblast customs who definitely looks as though they’re dripping. On lower health there’s an ordinary ambush, but as I’ve got fire armor she’s largely unable to hurt me before she drops out.

   —

   Storyline - ****. Another fine piece of pulp adventure. The one weak link here is exactly how I managed to trap the drought lich in a water crystal. I was figuring mission 4 would provide some clues to that effect and we’d trap her in mission 5, but nope, boss fight, arc over.

   It’s not that I can’t see ways. Maybe she was originally in one of ‘em in the underground river as kind of an eternal torment thing, and I’ve got a copy of the old sealing ritual. Maybe she gave some power trinket to her guard captain from mission 3 and I can use that signature to lock her inside the crystal. Maybe her unusual constitution is of the sort that I can just drag her over and suplex her on top of it.

   But I’ve presumably never seen these crystals before mission 1, so I was expecting a little more than an “of course!’ to go into the final mission with.

   Design - *****. There’s some really great work done with the new custom drought zombies. They’ve got a decent look to ‘em and sensible powersets. The Water Carriers look great, which is way more than I’d expect for a one-off, and there’s some novel use of the Mission Architect mechanics for the crystals in missions 1 and 4, and the queen in mission 2.

   Gameplay - ***. This is pretty much all down to mission 3 and the oppressive darkness of Ruladak. It’s pretty hard to make out anything that doesn’t have an aura in this map. Rularuu all have them, as do (for example) the Banished Pantheon. But the customs, aside from the boss, are nigh-invisible. Drain Psyche’s only a pain with this AI if you start combat right close to them, which is possible when invisible, and worse yet is Power Boosted Quicksand from the shadows. I can understand the need for Quicksand on the mages, as it fits their aesthetic, but with Power Boost on it turns from a hindrance into a death mire.

   Detail - ***. The supporting detail keeps up pretty well until I find the bones in mission 3, then the clues just kind of peter out, resulting in the confusion about exactly what went on that I talk about in the storyline above.

   The detail on the drought lich’s army is a bit lacking, too. I can understand not really bothering much with the water bearers, as there’s not really much time to have a look at their descriptions in the middle of a pitched battle. But the rest of her army… well. They’re from History, and could probably stand to have a bit of legend about them, or maybe a description of the pictures of them in an ancient scroll, rather than just a one-liner.

   Overall - ****. No real big-picture concerns, aside from what I’ve outlined above. It’d take just another clue or two and maybe visible auras on all the customs to satisfy most of my major concerns with how this one goes. It’s a decent sequel, keeping the theme but going largely to different places.

   Posted on November 8th, 2010 at 11:44 pm

2. PW Says:

   Storyline
   Design
   Gameplay
   Detail

   Great look, interesting plot, good looking custom characters and good re-purposing of some standard models. Gameplay could use some tuning; the amount of stacked Quicksand from the custom mobs was really too much, and wandering around the foggy Rularuu map felt rather tedious (I’d recommend either using a smaller map or putting more stuff to do on this map). Possibly the end boss could stand to be a little more challenging (though I will caveat this by saying I played the arc on a 6 player team which would affect that).

   Posted on December 17th, 2010 at 4:22 pm