Beach_Lifeguard

Level 47 Axe/Fire Brute.

Mission 1: Our contact is "Fractured One" who is actually a part of my dream...a dream I cannot wake up from. The basic premise here is that an alien world (the Kyrdos) is going to be destroyed, tomorrow. An invading alien race, the Raigaus are going to destroy it. We don't know why. The Kyrdosi have built a device that will allow them to transcend their universe and survive. the catch is they cannot activate it, and outside has to. so that is my goal here in Act 1. Seems like a pretty wild premise, but we'll go with it...

The custom enemy group of aliens looked really, really good. I wasn't sure what to expect, but they looked like a pretty mean group of aliens. they were soft though. I believe they were all claws scrappers, and I tore through them with ease.


Mission 2: Despite my efforts, their world was destroyed and when I activated the device, something went wrong. They did transcend, but...not completely. We are being sent to the edge of this "Void Shawdow", the place where the Kyrdosi are now. By the way, an interesting side story here, I seem to recognize my contact in my dream, but he or she tells me they cannot yet reveal who they are.

Apparently the Void shadow is an Arachnid cave. We fight mostly Blood Echoes, who are not as impressive as the first custom group. We do fight a scientist and a Kyrdosi hero, and they are both pretty pissed off at me for what has become of them. To me, that seems pretty thankless. they created the device and I was nice enough to trigger it for them. Hmmm, let's see what our contact has to say about this.


Mission 3: Our contact informs me that they are so mad that they are going to rip through the fabric of time and destroy my universe now. Well, we better go stop them. The Kyrdosi are now the enemy.

This was a fun mission. Ritki cave maps against more Echoes, with a pretty nice, powerful boss. Beating him slowed their progress, along with destroying 4 destructible objects, which sealed up the rips in time.



Mission 4: We learn that the Kyrdosi are like they are now because they were unwilling to let go of life when they transcended, so only this evil part of them exist now. In order to fight them in the Void, I must also do the same, but my contact won't let me sacrifice myself for this cause. The next mission is to become unstuck in time.

The dreaded destroyed Atlas Park map, and with no good reason. We have to destroy my own mind, love and hope. After searching, we find all three and beat them. They, and their minions looked pretty good, but the story is getting pretty out there by this point.


Mission 5: We learn our contact is a fragment of ourselves in the dream. Now that I have destroyed aspects of myself that bind me to time, I can now enter the Void. In order to close these large rips in time, I must absorb them into myself , which will delete me from time. Sounds like a fun time.

We battle through some caves, releasing echoes of my mind, love and hope. As we absorb the rips, we are sealed off from my universe, but I believe these things I rescued saved me and brought me back.


Overall, I am going to give this arc a 3 star rating. If you just want to beat on custom group without much resistance, this is a good arc to run through. If you are concerned about story or difficuly, skip this one. I found the story pretty far fetched, and towards the end it just went off into the bizarre, in my own opinion. The first mission was the highlight of this arc.

Level 47 Axe/Fire Brute

Mission 1: Ms. Liberty is our contact and she says that a child has been kidnapped. That is reason enough to do this mission, but then she also tells me the kidnapping happened 7 years ago and we are to go back in time to rescue her. she hints that this child may some kind of key figure in the future of Paragon City. The child's name is Liberty (strangely enough) and there may be an ally inside to help me.

The mission was a standard office map against most Family...pretty simple. There was a custom group in the guarding the hostages (the child and an ally). This group looked absolutely terrific. Loved them. The ally was way overpowered though and with the three clues were were burried in named and relationships to remember which made it all confusing for me. The basic gist is that the family kidnapped this kid for some unknown reason.


Mission 2: Ms. Liberty informs me that Little Liberty has been kidnapped again, 7 years ago. I thought that is when she was kidnapped the first time, but anyways....she was exploring a cave for some kind of treasure. That is where we are headed.

The mission was on a pretty large blue cave map - not a good choice, those are pretty universally considered horrible maps, and I agree. Still, the mission was pretty good, fighting against this customer group. They look great and provide a nice, but fair challenge. Perfectly balanced for me. We rescue this kid again and find the treasure which seems like a superhero costume. Hmmm...


Mission 3: Guess who has gone missing again? Yep, Little Liberty, except she is 21 years old now and was in search of a book. No more time traveling, but we are headed to an enchanted garden to find her, and that book.

The mission is the forrest map and the enemies are boulders and wisps - garden variety evil. We rescue the kid and find the book. The book reveals that Little Liberty is the grand-daughter of Miss Liberty and the costume, along with 2 swords, are very powerful and will one day allow Little Liberty to defeat the custom group (who fight against the idea of liberty).


Mission 4: This time we are being sent into the future. Little Lib had a dream (has many dreams of this sort actually) and sees a dark future, but also sees these swords. We will travel to one possible future time and retrieve those swords. Statesman himself will meet me there to help.

OK, so the map is the destroyed Atlas Park map, the most overused map in AE and as said many times before, one of my most hated. It fits the story though, so I can't complain TOO much. But I still hate it. You jump around a smoky, fire filled map looking for 1 little glowie and Statesman, who you have to rescue for no real reason.


Mission 5: Little Liberty has the costume and has the swords and.....has been captured again. This time by the leader of MAL (the custom group). I need to rescue her and defeat this guy. Hmm...I thought this was Little Liberty's destiny to do so? Well, let see how it turns out...

Cemetary map with 4 heroes to rescue. Thank you for making them stand out with a big green aura. the EB was very difficult to find and keep all the allies following, so I ditched them all and found him. It was a good fight, had to pop a couple purples, but he went down eventually.


Overall this was a mostly enjoyable arc to play. The story was pretty decent, though towards the end it felt like I was saving the world, not that it was Little Liberty's destiny. In fact, since I ditched her for the final fight, she wasn't even there for it. It could use some tightening up, but as is, it is still not too bad. the missions were all pretty good, but some of the map choices were a bit tough, particularly the destroyed Atlas Park map and the last one was too big to have 4 allies follow along, IMO. I can't give the arc 3 stars...it was better than that. But it also fell short of 4 stars for me. 3.5 (rounded up to 4 as the official rating).

OK, Level 45 Axe/Fire Brute

Mission 1: Our contact is a professor, who seems a little grumpy about having to work with heroes. It seems he has more professor-type things to do. He works with the Longbow, trying to stop the Council. Anyway, he sent another hero into a Council base, but he have not returned, so I guess I am next.

Pretty standard council mission. I rescue the Hero, Fire Renegade. He is an EB and does more damage against the Council than I did. I don't know how he got captured, or why he needed to be led all the way out. He did give me a disk for the Professor though.


Mission 2: The Professor decoded the disk and it is revealed that there is a special drug shipment coming in on a....well, ship. The Professor doubts they are either medical drugs or street drugs. Hmmm, wonder what they are? Oh, he sends us to get a sample, so I guess we'll find out.

The mission is a lot of council and a big cargo ship, not the most fun setup, but the last room had a bunch of bosses that were fun to fight and it wasn't the biggest cargo ship you could pick. We get some clues: a vial of brown liquid drug, the ship's captain's notes about wanting to stop these shipments, but can't, for Maria's sake, and a list of shipping records which include a hideous body and Serum 21G4.


Mission 3: The Professor cannot determine exactly what that drug is, only that it is some type of super soldier serum, but very powerful. Our next task is to go to a council base and download info on Serum 21G4.

Back into a council base for this mission, and it is the dreaded pool room map. Ouch. I rescued 3 Longbow, one of which was way overpowered. None of which had much of a reason to rescue. I do recover the data though.


Mission 4: The Professor has his people analyze the data and we learn that this is essentially Super Soldier Serum 2.0. It can make the super soldiers 500 times more powerful than the original. The data also says the first test on a human will be soon. The Professor has a mole inside the Council, we are sent to meet with him.

Interesting mission here. We defeat a couple of enemies on the low level, small council map. Then we escort the mole to the door, where he slips me a disk. Then we fight to keep up appearances.


Mission 5: So the final battle looms. We have to go to the council's lab where the first test will be taking place and basically destroy everything. The Professor will send 2 heroes to help me and also informs me that Nosferatu will be there overseeing everything. We don't have to beat him to complete our objectives.

The final mission was pretty fun. It felt epic, at least up until I go the hero that was an EB as an Ally. He was way overpowered. The fight against the super-soldier (who looked very nice) was trivial, as was the fight against Nosferatu. It made the end of the arc a bit of a let down. I know I could have dumped him along the way, but if the author puts allies in there, I take them, and determine if they were needed or overpowered, etc. The end should have been epic, but it wasn't.

Still, this was a pretty good arc. It started a bit slow, but missions 4 and 5 were very good. There were some questionable decision by the author that I referenced, but the author also did a lot of good things. Mission 4 was a very nice use of the MA abilities. The story was very easy to follow and entertaining enough....I'll give this arc a solid 4 star rating. It has potential to be a 5 star.

Level 4 Fire/Dark Brute...

Mission 1: Our contact is a police office and he tells me his younger brother is getting involved with gangs, specifically the Skulls. The Skulls initiation requires a killing of a rival gang member. Our job is to go and break up the fight that is going to happen, and for some reason bring back a magical spell book that is in the Hellion's possession. The mission started off fine, like a typical low level mission, and it used the smoky/burning building. We found Skulls and Hellions fighting each other and fighting me. Then at the end there was a level 6 EB. An EB for a Level 1-15 arc? I am running on Heroic and he crushed me. A few times. Even with some liberal use of inspirations.

OK, maybe I am having a real bad day, but that is two in a row I couldn't complete.

I won't rate this one, though i am tempted to give it a low rating for having an EB in a low level arc.

Part 4:

Level 44 Axe/Fire brute...

Mission 1: In the 4th chapter of this ongoing story, our contact is Ms. Liberty. She informs me that Mynx and Swan have been captured by the Protectorate. Their captors have been tracked to some caves in the hollows, so off we go. The custom enemy group this time around has a plant/thorns theme to it and as always they look really good and are a lot of fun to fight. The mission is pretty straightforward, and we pick up some interesting clues along the way that give us a bit of information and a few more questions about the overall arc and the Galactic Protectorate. We also discover some information that may lead us to the place where Swan is being held.

Mission 2: So the plan is for myself and Sister Psyche to take on the "Rendezvous Point Wolfsbane" base of the GP and get Swan out of there. The map is an Oranbaga cave, and not one of the easier ones to manuever through. Not much going on in this mission, except for lots of kills and tickets. Swan has been taken to another hideout and we learn that the leader of this group is some kind of botanist and is working on some experiments that mix plants and animals. I am finding that fighting thorns are tough, but the EB at the end was one of the easier ones.

Mission 3: General Adonis is going to attack the Circle of Thorns in order to get a missing ingredient for his experiements. Adonis also has Swan so it seems like we can rescue her and put an end to Adonis' plans all at once. This mpa was the outdoor forest mpa and there was a CoT and GP battle going on. Very nicely done mission, but the EB was unbeatable for me, and I wasn't able to finish the mission. I couldn't even get her health down 20% before her regen would bring it all the way to 100% again. This was with Ms. Liberty's help as well.

I love this who series of arcs, but this is the only one that I have had any sort of problem finishing. I'll give the author the benefit of the doubt since his work has been so good, and give this an incomplete. It was definately tracking to a 4 or 5 star rating though.

Level 43 Axe/Fire Brute...

Mission 1: Our contact is a mysterious guy without a real name. He promises me that we will make a lot of money. Sounds good to me. He has found a gemstone that is worth a lot of money. It may have magical powers, but he doesn't care....he is just in it for the money.

The mission is pretty simple, search some boxes until you find the gem. The custom enemy group looks alright, but they were not very exciting. Just a heavily armored security group. After finding the gem, a demon-type boss spawns and I have to defeat him. No explanation for this was given at all.


Mission 2: Here we find out that whoever touches the gem is marked and this demon will try to kill them. The demon cannot be killed either. My contact has touched it, as well as the person we sold it to. We need to find this guy and find out how to get the demon off our back.

We find him in his office, but he won't tell us anything. We fight the same custom group in this mission. It was a standard office map, decent mission.


Mission 3: Our contact made the guy talk. He said he was owed a favor by a Circle of thorns arch-mage, and this arch-mage casted a spell to get the demon off of his back. Well, we don't have any mages that owe us a favor, so we'll just have to go steal his spell book along with a few other items.

The map is Orenbaga. I know some people hate these, but this is one of the small ones and easy to manuever through. The objective in the mission just say what you have to get. It should say something like, "Find: x, y and z" There is a boss midway through the mission who is set to a very high difficulty, or so it seems. I had an awful time defeating him. The demon showed up again at the end and we dispatched him again, for now.


Mission 4: I give all the supplies to my contact and he sets up a ritual. Off we go....into some caves. We beat back the Circle again, do the ritual and the demon shows up anyway, this time as an EB. We put him away, for good this time.


Overall, I am going to rate this arc as a 3. First the good stuff: Good maps used. The story was very easy to follow. Decent custom group (not great though). Good use of Circle of Thorn.

The not-so-good: Custom was decent, but just filler. They had no story. Circle boss seemed very overpowered. While the story was well told, it just wasn't a very interesting story. Missions had good maps, and were OK, but nothing to exciting.