GlaziusF

@GlaziusF

Running this on a high-20s stone/stone brute, +0/x2 with bosses on.

---

Arachnos has taken the position that if they can't get into Croatoa, nobody can, and are using contact nobody's ever seen Veluta Lunata (trap ghosts in Port Oakes to unlock her but you'll probably need to flashback to her arcs) to deniably accomplish just that aim.

But first, to steal the way in from the Midnighters.

Huh. I don't remember demonologists in the stock Midnighters. Then again they've probably been getting updates with the new power sets. Or is that your doing?

...pretty sure "Japanologist" is your doing. Ouch. Find another word for that, maybe? Shujenga?

---

Mission 2: throw down with a giant monster. Well, alright then!

...well. I've got like twenty boss lost souls to do it with, but the thing is, Eochai loves him some AoE. Can't crack his regen and keep them all up long enough on the first go-round. Restarting the arc to try again.

Fortunately things work out a bit better next time. I think because they got blown around by a bonfire summon so they weren't all getting picked off.

And my total contribution to the fight is worth about three minions of XP. Wow.

---

But with the Firbolg routed, now it's time to put paid to their allies in the Cabal.

...huh. Plant/poison control and electric control minions. Are you folding these in? I honestly can't tell.

Anyway, it's the Mary Mac map, with a single thing to bust up and then some bosses to fight. Pretty straightforward stuff, and the Red Caps do their own little Greek chorus of gloating.

---

And in the occasionally worthwhile "villain setup" fashion, we're setting up the Katie Hannon task force by running off with her soul.

I set up... wow, this is a pretty visually impressive Arachnos doodad.

About the only dead part of this all is running Katie up the twisty rooty passages to the exit. The big fight with Mary goes off pretty well.

---

And now to destroy the wards in Salamanca and some of the Midnight Squad's heavy hitters.

So... Monty, Ashley McKnight, and War Witch herself. Not a bad collection of end bosses, and the Red Caps showing up with hostages as things fall apart is a nice effect.

And hey. We... actually broke off Salamanca from reality? Go figure.

Aw man. That bug where if you log in and don't check an arc's clues before you finish it your entire souvenir history gets destroyed is still there.

---

Storyline - ****. So I'm a little bit confused here. Initially it looked like things were setting up to be the sort of "villain side of the story" you often get in CoV, breaking the stalemate in Croatoa and setting up for actual heroic intervention.

And then the end hits, and it turns out this entire thing was actually reacting to the hero arcs and now Salamanca's gone?

...maybe?

I mean, thematically the arcs are setting up the hero arcs, but the storytelling seems to indicate it's a response to them. It's just a little unclear.

Design - *****. I am almost entirely certain that the Midnighters and the Cabal received extra custom enemies, but the visual design was so similar that I'm still not entirely certain.

Consider that a tribute. You'd have to screw up map and objective selection to lose five stars after pulling something like that off, and thankfully nothing like that happens.

Gameplay - ***. Leading something out of cramped mine tunnels with extra cramp thanks to the root-cellar geometry isn't a fun time. Even less of a fun time is having to herd like twenty dudes all across a map in order to stand a chance against the giant monster.

The remaining challenges in the arc are all pretty reasonable, especially with the provided help, but those two moments are real lip-biters.

Detail - *****. All the dialogue and similar mesh pretty well with immediate events, and the custom enemy descriptions are terse and generally after the style of the official ones.

Overall - ****. The big picture's a little unclear, but that doesn't really come in until the very end, and there's some very fitting custom design to flesh out some of the underpopulated enemy groups.

But the big black mark here is the Eochai fight. There's just too much running around and keeping track of escorts beforehand, just to make it survivable, and as a result it really doesn't feel like I'm making much difference in the fight against the giant monster. At least the lost souls clip through each other; can't think what it would have been like otherwise.

Less than a month delay this time! How about that.

Tonight's arc: A review of Condemning Croatoa. (245534) Verdict - ****. Review below in this thread.

My current queue:

• Reviews for The Doctor Returns (1140), Et in Arcadia Ego (525441), and Project Dragon (522067)
• I'm also open to reviews by request, for anything you know is working.

If anybody wants in, the instructions are in the first post. I've recently made a few clarifications to it. A part of these instructions, perhaps pertinent to this post: I always vote 5 in-game, as it seems a bit uncouth to ask people to jump through hoops and then bomb their rating.

Something that isn't in the instructions but could stand to be said: CoH Mission Review isn't my private site. It's not even my site. Anybody's welcome to leave a review on anything, and it hardly has to be as long as the critical monstrosities I find myself putting out now and again.

@GlaziusF

Running this on a high-40s ice/axe tanker, +0/x2 with bosses on.

I... have a feeling I know how this is going to end.

---

Agent G gives me the run down: a Vanguard agent (supposedly) murdered a researcher and her daughter in a fit of passion, Longbow was called in to make the arrest, and then the Rikti swarmed.

The agent doesn't think very highly of Vanguard's cross-faction nature, either.

Oh! The Vanguard briefing hall. Interesting setting.

Rikti are in force, and the Vanguard are firing at everything... except for our murder suspect, who is urging caution. Huh.

I lead him back to the saferoom and he begs me to actually, you know, investigate. I get some very general objectives.

Tracking down some glowies I find... yeah, about what I expected.

Interesting story behind it, though.

---

Storyline - ***. Really, I've waffled about this. Technically it's not a fault with the story itself. I guess my real issue with this is that it's presented as an investigation, but it's also a tribute to an Edgar Allen Poe story, and shares the same revelation about the actual murderer.

But... if you pick up on the title drop, which isn't hard, it kind of spoils the ending.

So yeah, with a different title this mystery story would have more mystery to it. Maybe eventually I'd have twigged to the tribute, considering that the story was about investigating, uh, murders in the RWZ morgue? But putting it front and center just brought things to mind immediately.

Design - *****. Good progression of the story through the mission, though. Really nice use of the Vanguard base map and placement to tell a story in the same staging area/active mission separation that the original Vanguard base mission does.

Gameplay - ***. Unfortunately, this has the same problems the original Vanguard base mission has, and a few more besides. The Vanguard base is tightly packed and honeycombed with passageways, making the mission map more of a suggestion than a reality. The enemies are stock, not hard to fight at all, but actually figuring out where to go to accomplish the objectives involves a lot of turning around.

Detail - *****. The contact's motivations are well set-up, and story progression is crystal-clear.

Overall - ****. Really, if you want to put this in the base, there's no way not to make it labyrinthine. There's wonderful work done with the nature of the map.

It really sounds odd to say that this would be a more successful story if only it had a different title, but in some ways a title sets expectations and serves as a touchstone.

Quick reminder - I don't run CoHMR. But you should probably contact the site admin if something's gone that long without being put up.

Tonight's arc: A review of The Murders in the RWZ Morgue. (452144) Verdict - ****. Review below in this thread.

My current queue:

• A review of Condemning Croatoa (245534)
• Reviews for The Doctor Returns (1140), Et in Arcadia Ego (525441), and Project Dragon (522067)
• I'm also open to reviews by request, for anything you know is working.

If anybody wants in, the instructions are in the first post. I've recently made a few clarifications to it. A part of these instructions, perhaps pertinent to this post: I always vote 5 in-game, as it seems a bit uncouth to ask people to jump through hoops and then bomb their rating.

Something that isn't in the instructions but could stand to be said: CoH Mission Review isn't my private site. It's not even my site. Anybody's welcome to leave a review on anything, and it hardly has to be as long as the critical monstrosities I find myself putting out now and again.

@GlaziusF

Running this on a high 40s ice/axe tanker, +0/x2 with bosses on.

---

So. A team was traveling to a new weird part of the Shadow Shard and the vine snapped behind them. Sounds like the kind of stuff I wish they'd done more of with the Shard. Let's see where they wound up.

Ah. They went to ground and activated a portal beacon. Fair enough - wonder if any of the Shard maps even made it into Architect?

Huh. Some mercs as escort buddies. That's nice.

No clues this mission, but some weirdness: Rularuu cultists who call the existing refugees a "lost tribe" and take on the powers of aspects of Rularuu, including some slaver guy we've yet to be exposed to.

---

Doc Huxley sums up what we should really have picked up from clues, but it's an alright narrative.

...though for some reason the narrative makes me wonder if I've secured the precious cargo in my hat.

Anyway, as the mission wears on we find that these guys actually booted Nemesis and Rikti invaders out of their part of the shard, and they're kind of resentful of Paragon City for not getting there sooner.

They may be planning an invasion, or just very very curious.

---

Looks like it's the invasion option.

...also this is weird. From Sara Moore's story these people are refugees from the first Rikti War. But she's a third-generation Sharder. I always figured them to be those people from the first Superadine experiments who slipped into an alternate dimension (when Lanaruu "broke the world", as that's the first recorded event in their history), but I'm trying to figure out why I think that.

The running fights are pretty nice, but I think you may have things balanced the wrong way, as Longbow are spawning Wardens and cleaning house.

Anyhow, it seems like these guys got pulled back in time trying to escape the Rikti, so they've had a few dozen years to get their resent on.

---

Well, hey. Nemesis Shard base after all.

To sign a truce.

I... wonder what's going to go wrong. Nice details in the base as I'm trying to put off clicking for as long as possible.

Ah, it's just gonna get jumped by Wisps, as happens now and again.

Finding them in the overworld is a chore, however. Maybe they need some kind of visible animation. Like the psychic hold on the minions? (Also the Overlords aren't tagged as soldiers of Chularn like the minions.)

Huh. They call their grand overlord "Hero". That's an interesting title.

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And this one may have drunk too deep of the Madness. Fighting through some other bosses who summon appropriate shard beasties, I get to the old Tyrant cave. Good place for a boss fight, and I manage to pick off one of the Rikti heavies before my buddies start a fight with...

Oh hey, Hero 5 is Hero 1. He pops Unstoppable but I'm hardly hurting for help.

I take some time to examine the monuments of Heroes past and the aspects of Rularuu before I punch out.

---

Storyline - ****. About the only thing I'm kind of iffy on is the origin of Paragon City people in the Shadow Shard. There's the Superadine experiments (though again, no idea why I think that) or just the possibility that these are the "casualties" of Rularuu's initial incursion into this dimension, before he was banished to the Shadow Shard.

The only reason this kind of grates is that given the kind of high-test arcane power that went into Omega Team, somebody had to recognize what the Shadow Shard was, and I can't think of many scenarios where breaking the seal on the prison of a guy who eats dimensions, or dumping a bunch of civilians on the doorstep of a guy who eats dimensions, is the better option.

I mean, maybe I'm wrong here. Maybe knowledge of the Shard died in the original Rikti attack on the Midnighters. It certainly didn't survive to the current day with the destruction of Omega Team.

Design - *****. Some really great work with the custom enemies here, lifting names from the custom weapons for the minions and drawing on the extant pantheon for inspiration on the powers of higher-up characters.

The repurposed Nemesis base ties into the plot pretty nicely, and the caves are caves you'd find in the Shadow Shard, if not terribly interesting in themselves. The arena for the final battle was distinctive and well-justified.

Gameplay - ***. Tracking down multiple objectives on a large outdoor map with absolutely no indication of where they are is never much fun. Since these objectives are actually enemies you could give them some kind of distinctive animation to aid in visibility - the map has such uneven terrain that just jumping around and pounding tab is likely to miss something over or under a rise.

The final map, while definitely thematically appropriate, runs into the same problem as the end of the Cimerora incarnate arc - multiple challenges that need your team of allies to overcome, but if something goes awry and you lose a teammate, succeeding challenges get harder and kind of snowball. Allies tend to pursue flying minions and generally engage when you don't want them to, so making things even more chaotic with ambushes (multiple ambushes? not sure) just ratchets up the pressure.

I'd suggest maybe making the notable opposition in the last map elite bosses with large entourages who don't call for help.

Detail - ****. Thankfully for my eyes, the spectrum of color on offer in briefings doesn't get too dark to tell apart from the text outlines. Gradually adding to the briefing as allies come into the picture is a nice touch.

Not so nice are the return of this author's old friends, bullet-point briefings and extraneous clues. I still have a preference for summing up an investigation in an opening or closing clue, rather than in bullet points in a brief or debrief. I guess because at least a little, bullet points punch through the fourth wall, and briefings are supposed to be a little more conversational. The altars in the last mission are a pretty nice example of extraneous clues - yes, it's interesting to read about how these people view the Aspects of Rularuu, and we'd certainly get that information from examining these altars... but they're in the boss chamber. The same one where we shepherded our herd of allies up against two heavies and the end boss. At that point learning about these things doesn't really inform the progress of the arc.

They don't necessarily torpedo things, but they're a little disappointing.

Overall - ****. The arc goes to a place I've rarely seen and does something interesting there. What really drags this down is the run-and-seek session in the Nemesis shard base and the excessive pressure of herding allies through the last map. The rest's up to style.

Funny story. I've been too busy playing the game normally to venture into Architect. Maybe time to shift focus a little.

Tonight's arc: A review of Rularularian (529832) Verdict - ****. Review below in this thread.

My current queue:

• A review of Condemning Croatoa (245534)
• Reviews for The Doctor Returns (1140), The Murders in the RWZ Morgue (452144), Et in Arcadia Ego (525441), and Project Dragon (522067)
• I'm also open to reviews by request, for anything you know is working.

If anybody wants in, the instructions are in the first post. I've recently made a few clarifications to it. A part of these instructions, perhaps pertinent to this post: I always vote 5 in-game, as it seems a bit uncouth to ask people to jump through hoops and then bomb their rating.

Something that isn't in the instructions but could stand to be said: CoH Mission Review isn't my private site. It's not even my site. Anybody's welcome to leave a review on anything, and it hardly has to be as long as the critical monstrosities I find myself putting out now and again.

The requestening continues.

Tonight's arc: A review of Arena (456200) Verdict - ***. Review in MA Forums Thread.

My current queue:

• A review of Rularularian (529832)
• Reviews for The Doctor Returns (1140), The Murders in the RWZ Morgue (452144), Et in Arcadia Ego (525441), and Project Dragon (522067)
• I'm also open to reviews by request, for anything you know is working.

If anybody wants in, the instructions are in the first post. I've recently made a few clarifications to it. A part of these instructions, perhaps pertinent to this post: I always vote 5 in-game, as it seems a bit uncouth to ask people to jump through hoops and then bomb their rating.

Something that isn't in the instructions but could stand to be said: CoH Mission Review isn't my private site. It's not even my site. Anybody's welcome to leave a review on anything, and it hardly has to be as long as the critical monstrosities I find myself putting out now and again.

Review as part of the CoHMR Aggregator project.

@GlaziusF

Running this on a max-level fire/DB brute, +1/x2 with bosses on.

---

Well, this is an interesting conceit. Amanda Vines, WSPDR, bringing you the mission live and in-progress.

Looks like something's decided to crash this competition, and I'm being paid to put a stop to those sorts of shenanigans.

Ah, Freaks. The original crashers of everything. There's a boss up front who claims Pohsyb set this whole thing up.

The Family's guarding A BRAND NEW CAR, which they've somehow managed to lever up a narrow flight of stairs and onto a balcony. That kind of dedication deserves a not getting the car exploded.

Krylov is rescued but mute the whole time, seems a bit of an oversight.

Popping Pohysb free at the end reveals this entire thing was just a plan cooked up between himself and his handler to rattle Castle at the match, poor suffering security guards be damned.

---

Hmm. Apparently Arachnos is taking the opportunity to reach out and tempt someone.

(Though I would like to see something in my own thoughts actually in the mission briefing to that effect.)

Fighting through a small army of reds and blues (very nice choices overall) I drop Pohsyb and Castle so the match will be invalidated due to gross malfunction.

Castle... seems to be buying the lead. Well well.

---

Hmm. Interesting. Arachnos wants Castle to spring Ms. Vines' mom, who he apparently arrested in the first place. Let's see how he reacts to the offer.

Initially tempted. When he finds out what would be involved he decides he wants no part of it, but a gentle sword upside the head gets them both to come around.

I am SUCH a good negotiator.

Also, Krylov's caltrops count as part of his boss fight. I'm not sure what they did to make them not count in the game proper, but it hasn't spread to Architect.

---

The WSPDR report makes it seem like Castle's gone back to being a good hero after all, though my whisperclip reveals it all as a ruse.

Standrd Zig rescue, though for some reason Ms. Vines' walking animation has her clutching an arcane tome.

Castle needs a little walking around to grab, but I find him outside easy enough after I drop off the spy. His musings reveal that it's devotion that flipped him blue to red (or I suppose gold to red if vigilante is gold?).

---

Castle asks us to meet him. Well, let's see what he's up to.

The Arbiter shows up, unheralded by the mission briefing. I figure what the heck and smack him down, though he's still got his stock Sands description.

Castle wants to get dropped and smuggled back to Paragon City, claiming mind control, illusions, robot duplicates, alternate universes, Nemesis plots, or all of the above. His reputation's messed up, but he's already betrayed the game and has no desire to go back.

---

Storyline - ***. A gripping tale of love, intrigue, betrayal, and poor sportsmanship... locked to the perspective of a media personality interviewing a largely disinterested security guard. I haven't seen the original musical, so perhaps I'm not the best audience for this, but I expect that a similarly background figure didn't take center stage in it. (Also it doesn't seem like test subject Pohsyb would be very given to giving interviews, but then that would leave Krylov as the romantic analogue, and, uh, yeah.)

Actually being the villain going up against Castle in the Arena might be an interesting perspective on this whole thing, but would remove a lot of the musical numbers -- then again to someone like me who isn't a fan of the musical, the musical numbers are just so much dissociated poetry.

Design - *****. Interesting use of custom groups to bring the Arena fights to life - generally stock stuff otherwise. The maps fit what they're supposed to be pretty well and objectives show up pretty sensibly, even on the outdoor maps (though word of warning, I've seen bosses show up on catwalks for those).

Gameplay - ****. Pretty good fights, except that as far as I can tell the Arbiter in the last mission isn't an optional fight and there's no warning about him.

Detail - **. Practically all of the personally relevant exposition to the story happens through clues. When that happens, it's important that they be clear to read, Royal blue and purple autocolors are really bad for this, given how low-contrast they are with their mandatory black borders, but in large quantities red text tends to all run together too.

The detail is otherwise very nicely done, but this is kind of a big deal.

Overall - ***. The missions themselves weren't bad, but the narrative perspective made sussing out the actual plot a bit of a chore.

The requestening continues.

Tonight's arc: A rereview of The Fractured Dreamer (498588) Verdict - ****. Review in MA Forums Thread.

My current queue:

• A review of Rularularian (529832)
• Reviews for The Doctor Returns (1140), Arena (456200), The Murders in the RWZ Morgue (452144), Et in Arcadia Ego (525441), and Project Dragon (522067)
• I'm also open to reviews by request, for anything you know is working.

If anybody wants in, the instructions are in the first post. I've recently made a few clarifications to it. A part of these instructions, perhaps pertinent to this post: I always vote 5 in-game, as it seems a bit uncouth to ask people to jump through hoops and then bomb their rating.

Something that isn't in the instructions but could stand to be said: CoH Mission Review isn't my private site. It's not even my site. Anybody's welcome to leave a review on anything, and it hardly has to be as long as the critical monstrosities I find myself putting out now and again.

Rereview for the CoHMR Aggregator project.

@GlaziusF

Rerunning this one on the same high-40s ice/axe tanker, still at +0/x2 with bosses on. Most of my comments are going to be fairly perfunctory, limited to the changes I've noticed.

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Mission 1: maybe some text clarifications here but I couldn't really say. On a completely unrelated note I had to drop the mission and go get some dinner, and when I came back Architect seemed to have lifted the usual Sapper moratorium for solo heroes, but only in the areas I'd already cleared out. Just something I thought was worth passing along to anybody doing Malta missions.

Mission 2: the kids inclined to sidekicking are more survivable, the relationship between Crey and Malta has gotten clearer (there are some Malta on site running oversight) and on a happier note the kids have their research file descriptions, so the two kids who run off are no longer explicitly doomed to lives of pain and suffering.

Mission 3: maybe there's a little more text about the clinic staff, but again I couldn't really say.

Mission 4: hey, it's an actual Carnie base. I don't know what it is but I always find it easier to fight through a warehouse than through a city block. Nothing else about the mission seems to have changed much, though, aside from a bit of a Longbow presence after I've secured the area.

Mission 5! Alright, something new. Psychonauts time, baby.

The mobs in here are throwing out psyblast and lesser mind controls, and they're posed around the objectives in such a way that they're almost shambling awake to fight. Very nice effect. The echo of the mad doctor from mission 2 is a nice fusion of his original powers and his nature as a mental construct, and after he goes down it's just one more fight against the psyche fragments before Josephine gets back to daylight.

The only real problem I have with the goings-on here is that the map here is one of the tiny crumbly labs and there isn't even a single normal spawn crawling the halls. I barely have time to appreciate the atmosphere before it's all over.

---

Storyline - ****. I do a much better job of living up to my own foreshadowing in this arc, so that's a big improvement over last time out.

I have a very slight problem with the setup of the last mission, though. Not to put too fine a point on it, but there are heroes who punch things and heroes who work out what things to punch, and Mynx has always struck me as squarely in the former camp. So having her come out with a plan to free a mutant mentalist from her own mind feels a bit pulled out of nowhere - it's not even like she might have some mutant perspective on the thing, because she's a product of Science like Synapse is.

Having her relay a plan that the clinic staff have come up with would go over much better and also actually give them a positive contribution to the story.

Design - ****. The Malta/Crey relationship is a little clearer now, the escorts are more durable, and there's some very nice visual and animation work to make the enemies in the last mission very atmospheric.

I just wish it didn't take place on a postage-sized map so they had some more time to shine. Would that one Faultline skyscraper with the secret base in it work for your objectives? You wouldn't even have to lead Josie "out" necessarily, maybe just to an inside glowie that represents an exit point.

Gameplay - *****. The Carnie warehouse is pretty big, but it seems a lot less like it goes on forever than the Carnie office park. Most of the opposition is stock and the handful of customs seem pretty reasonable.

Detail - *****. Whatever issues I might have with the story, there's always a good clear picture of what's going on.

Overall - ****. The former last mission is much more reasonable now, and the story actually gets a proper ending instead of spiraling off into narrative oblivion.

The ending could stand to be a bit better set up and perhaps a bit more busy if that's possible, but this mission is a definite step up from its previous version.

Let me elaborate on the timeline as I understand it. 14,000 years ago the Mu worshippers of Hequat try to impose their vision of magic on the Circle of Thorns. Following their shameful loss in round 1 is the raising of Mu and the binding of Leviathan... and not much later than this is round 2, where the Mu rain electric death down on Oranbega from their skyships and the Circle tap into demonic power to win the war, refuse to pay the price for it (finish off the innocent survivors) and get reduced to spirits, the stragglers of the Mu blending into the burgeoning mass of humanity and giving rise to nigh-on every magic user in existence. (Some of the Circle think they should try to pay the price and they have among other things a demon book that can trace your ancestry back to those times.)

The details of round 2 is mostly information from the Envoy of Shadows arc, which also includes a bunch of demons getting the Circle to summon the titular archdemon by wiggling their fingers spookily and talking about Hequat. Akarist is mortally terrified she might be coming back, as she and Ermeeth have both been out of the loop, and Akarist doesn't say anything about her participation in the war - Hequat may well have returned to her own Spirit City shortly after giving the Mu an iron fortress to forge floating ionic doom out of their raw hatred.

Diviner Maros's Leviathan arc also puts Calystix at 14,000 years ago, in some of the records of the sealing of the Leviathan in ancient Mu that the Legacy Chain have collected.

But let me see if I understand things correctly. At the start of the arc, Stheno has already left for the modern-day location of the Rogue Isles. The events of the arc are just wiping out the remnants of the Egyptian Snakes so the Mu will go west.

So... there never is an answer to the question of why the Snakes are in Mercy Island in the first place? That's kind of the entire reason I was interested in the arc to begin with.

@GlaziusF

Running this on a high-40s ice/axe tank, +0/x2 with bosses on.

---

Going back to Cimerora to investigate a raid by the Egyptians and possibly reveal the origin of the Snakes? Sounds good man.

He passes off a translation amulet that would make a lovely mission start clue.

...wow. Yeah, for some reason all the captives in missions are activating their spawns at mission start. That really dumps a lot of text into the buffer in a case like this.

Anyway, ordinary Egyptian warriors. And flame mages. And a priestess with mind control and Terrify.

Oh. And trick archers who can multistack the giant defense debuff that is Oil Slick. It's also a little bugged in Architect in that you can light it up to hurt yourself, but the enemies can't.

The lieutenant ninjashashins also pack Blinding Powder, which is a more reasonable confuse than the mind or illusion powers in that can't be permanently applied, but still a pain.

Also roaming about once I get back outside: serpent Egyptians in small patrols. They guard some of the outside captives. The Priestess in charge is also wavin' around Terrify.

Well. Miss SIs Past Blast Psyche is missing. This can't be good.

---

The contact remarks that we've got serpentines here but they're not much like modern Snakes. While he tries to work out what the heck, we're to get busy saving Solaris.

This cave sure looks like the modern Snakes!

And these dudes guarding the captives sure look like the modern Elder Snakes! Is our contact supposed to know about them? Because they did poke up in the Rogue Isles for a while.

There are also bits and bobs of lore floating around in scroll urns. Maybe a few too many. There's like half a dozen of them. This seems like information that might be better-suited to being dispensed by the contact somehow, as it's all either background or important plot revelations.

Also a Mu... servant of Hequat, judging by the description. So it probably shouldn't be Arachnos-aligned in its enemy group.

Oh. No. It is actually Arachnos-aligned, says my contact. Apparently Arachnos have time-traveled back here too? Huh.

---

Whoa. Arachnos have kidnapped Sister Solaris? Where'd you pick up on that, o contact? I sure picked up a lot of info but the Mu didn't say anything and that was really the only source for that tidbit.

At least he's coming along to deal with whatever's running the show here.

Some Arachnos patrols are talking about infiltrating Romulus's army in the past, to some end.

I also hear "Arachnos Vipers"? The hey?

Oh. Genegineered Snake infiltrators.

So I clear out the end room, travel all the way back to the entrance to fight the last boss (a villain-class Fortunata who likes to run her mouth to Beckyeqsue orders of magnitude), and then... head back to the end room to set the destruct code? Are objectives really so sparse on this map?

I mean, I can appreciate the shed skin as ambience, but not if it's getting in the way of spawns to this extent.

So Sister Solaris wasn't in this base either?

...ah. We went after the wrong Mu. That... might make sense? I wasn't aware they actually had much of a beef with Cimerora though.

---

No speculation from the contact as to why they've got her, either. Just discussion on how these Mu probably haven't... started their great civilization yet? The what? Ermeeth vs. Hequat kinda played out at the dawnatime. By Cimeroran times the Mu had reduced the Oranbegans to spirits.

Anyway, these tribal-lookin' folks (in the tiny Pantheon cave) include boss mages who summon voltaic sentinels, which are basically incorporeal sappers with how aggressively their autoattack saps your blue bar.

I drop Hequat, who just wanted to see how much fight I had because she's apparently counting on me to drop the Snakes and... indirectly lead the Mu to glory? Somehow? All seems like a bit of a runaround to me, but what do I know of the ways of goddesses and their prismatic paticle effects.

But we now know where the main Temple of Apep is, and also the location of Sister Solaris. ...at least I think we do. Still no clue about the map.

---

Oh hey, the Spirit City (vaults of mu? I seem to remember the map was labeled wrong). Here I was just expecting the big Snake temple.

Nothing much new here. Rescue Solaris, put down the priestess trying to use her to ascend, defeat the Stheno rename who talks about Stheno setting off to the west.

When we get back my contact tries to pretend we had something to do with that. Stheno setting off, I mean, But it seems she was long gone by the time we were there.

Also Stheno's kind of a Greek name for an Egyptian cultist.

---

Storyline - **. So shortly before playing this arc, I worked my way through the Dark Astoria incarnate arc, which included a stopover in Cimerora. Say what you will about the mission design there, the plot was pretty engaging. And I opened this arc figuring, hey, the Talons of Vengeance have snake-ladies waving around very familiar weapons, the mythological Stheno had cause to be revengeanceful, maybe this'll be a nice piece along those lines. Not that I'm judging this arc against my own blind impression of what might go on, but the Cimerora arc does end with a reminder of the relative chronologies of Cimerora and Oranbega/the Mu.

Ermeeth and Hequat had it out over the proper role of magic sometime before the conventional dawn of civilization. The Mu ran off, and Hequat raised up a continent for them to build an iron fortress and harden up. Only Merulina was using the land at the time and she summoned the Leviathan to push Hequat's face in, which was subsequently bound in the caves that are now beneath Sharkhead Isle, suggesting that the Rogue Isles are the shattered remains of Mu. Cimerora shows up during the conventional Roman Empire, thousands of years later, as presumably would Stheno and the Egyptian pantheon. This isn't to say there can't be some remnants of ancient Mu that are forming a cult to Hequat around this time, but the dawn of the Mu civilization itself was a long, long time ago.

Even taking my contact at his word for what's gone on in the arc, the links between the missions aren't very clear, beyond the map to the cult base that links missions 1 and 2. The Mu took Sister Solaris (and we know this how?) so we head for the Arachnos base, but she's not there so the contemporary Mu must have her (and we find them how?) only they've sent her to the main temple of Apep (which is where?) and Stheno's gone west when we get there (why exactly? Was she afraid of us or is three high snake priestesses one high snake priestess too many?).

Design - ****. Three custom groups at play here - the Apep cultists and the bridge between them and the Elder Snakes, and the Mu tribalists. All of them look very nice and have pretty sensible powersets, and most of the maps are a decent fit for the plot as presented.

The only real issue I have is that hybrids and Elder Snakes feel like steps down from the initial cultists of Apep, who throw around fear and confusion and thus present more of a challenge.

Gameplay - ****. I've got a little issue with glowie placement. In the Snake caves they're a bit crowded into the initial few rooms. In the Arachnos base they appear only in the one back room, forcing you to run the mission front to back twice to accomplish all the objectives. I don't know if that's choice on your part or just glowie availability for the maps themselves, but either way, giant concentrations of glowies can be kind of overwhelming to have to process all at a go.

Detail - **. There are a whole lot of clues in this arc, and either the important ones, the ones that would establish the links between missions, got lost in the shuffle or never showed up at all. I picked up clues for Arachnos plots that don't matter and Egyptian goddesses who never show up, and a decent amount that restated the action and dialogue we already saw, which can be helpful for bringing a team up to speed on things they may not have seen.

But in all that flood of information, the actual thread of evidence leading between missions never surfaces.

Overall - ***. The big obstacle here is the plot. It isn't clear how one mission flows into the next, and the narrative itself contradicts the relative timelines the Mu and Cimerora operate on in canon.

The requestening continues.

Tonight's arc: A full review of The Serpent Beyond The Horizon (515140). Verdict - ***. Review lower in this thread.

My current queue:

• A review of Rularularian (529832, not on CoHMR yet)
• Reviews for The Doctor Returns (1140), Arena (456200), The Murders in the RWZ Morgue (452144), Et in Arcadia Ego (525441), and Project Dragon (522067), starting no earlier than April 19th.
• A re(re?)review of The Fractured Dreamer (498588)
• I'm also open to reviews by request, for anything you know is working.

If anybody wants in, the instructions are in the first post. I've recently made a few clarifications to it. A part of these instructions, perhaps pertinent to this post: I always vote 5 in-game, as it seems a bit uncouth to ask people to jump through hoops and then bomb their rating.

Something that isn't in the instructions but could stand to be said: CoH Mission Review isn't my private site. It's not even my site. Anybody's welcome to leave a review on anything, and it hardly has to be as long as the critical monstrosities I find myself putting out now and again.

@GlaziusF

Running this on a mid-20s ice/fire dominator, +1/x1 with bosses on.

---

So Desdemona wants us to pull an old-school heist, like we did back in the day before we were going to Paragon City all the time. Sure, why not.

The bank is completely empty! ...except for some Outcasts who want to play hero.

Seriously, completely empty. No free loot, just some spilled greenbacks and inflation in these parts is ridiculous.

Leave it up to Outcasts to try to be heroes in the Rogue Isles. ...but what happened to the diamonds?

Ah, says the clue, the bossman is keeping them safe from villains.

---

So we're going to kidnap notable up-and-coming celebrity Desdemona the Glint and see if the Outcasts are dumb enough to play hero again.

...oh. It's Longbow. They're always dumb enough to play hero.

For some reason Desdemona spouts off as soon as I enter the building? I don't think that's you necessarily; I've been noticing that early activation happening a lot with contacts lately.

Apparently the Outcasts are setting up their own little republic in desolate Bloody Bay. That's just so precious. But they're not above hitting the Rogue Isles for capital, which puts them in direct competition with us.

---

Scenic Bloody Bay, huh? This will be interesting.

Ah, the Crash. Close enough. Heh. The entry clue's getting clever. I like it.

I drop a Circle mage and then a custom Outcast Brick-style boss. Apparently, says the mage who knows the winning side when he sees it, what the Outcasts horked weren't real diamonds in the first place, but power crystals with Circle are willing to trade for diamonds 1-for-1.

---

Desdemona... offers to send her servants into the cave ahead of us, and passes us a magic amulet. That'd make a good mission start clue. I expect I'll infer from context what "servants" means.

Seems pretty quiet in here so far, aside from some silent Outcasts.

Bal-Thoom. ...a spectral demon. Perhaps Desdemona hasn't been co-opted by the Circle, but this guy looks pretty stock.

...there's a Shivan down here. That'll be fun. Apparently the Outcasts have sort of domesticated it. ...and hidden the key to a treasure chest inside.

So what's in the chest? The crystals I came for? Why, yes. Yes, they are. And my spectral buddy isn't turning on me, so there's that.

----

...and the Circle want to make a trade for them. In a cemetery. At night. How many ways can THIS go wrong?

Well, the Outcasts could crash the place, for one.

They could be led by some kind of meteor man, for two, though he needs a boss description.

Meteor man keeps Shivans as pets. Hoo boy. But he goes down. And then the CoT boss shows up to make the trade.

Oh, this is clever. He points to the patch of earth where the diamonds are hidden but it's up to us to grab them. ...though he seems to think that fighting the meteor man was optional when it was the trigger to spawn him in the first place.

Anyway. Diamonds. FINALLY. Some days gainful employment almost seems worth it.

---

Storyline - ****. This is that particular class of heist movie where the runaround after loot actually pays off in the end, where everyone's shaded grey to black, which is definitely in-feel with the Rogue Isles.

The one thing I think it's missing is a genuine third-party perspective on the Outcasts and what they're trying to accomplish. I mean, yes, their delusional attempts at heroism are ultimately futile, along with the callow self-righteousness they pretend is "justice", but there's a certain class of villain who thinks that about everyone and in the course of this arc we generally contact them exclusively.

Design - ****. There really isn't an Architect map that works as EXT. BLOODY BAY, but the Crash is probably as close as you're going to get to the aesthetic. Same with the little ring of Moth Cemetery for EXT. BLOODY BAY GRAVEYARD (presumably it's in Bloody Bay, they've got 'em there and all that). Overall the maps are as good as you could hope for, given the story, and they don't really play badly or anything.

Opposition is largely stock and sensible, but there are a couple of customs in the super Lead Brick from mission 3 and the meteor man from the final mission. The problem is that they look alike. Or rather that they're both running the entire panoply of earth armor toggles. Maybe give one or the other shield defense with an earth shield instead?

Something else you may want to consider: stuff shows up pretty much at random on outdoor maps, so it's entirely possible to drop the meteor man and see the glowy pile of diamond rubble before ever finding the Circle mage who tells you about it. Is it possible not to turn on the glowie until he's led to it?

Gameplay - *****. The handful of outdoor maps have very clear objectives, and the normal maps clear in a decent clip too. Everything moves along at a workable pace and the enemies are stock and far from punishing. Goes down smooth.

Detail - ****. There's some great humor to be had if you pay attention to the details. The arc certainly doesn't take itself too seriously.

But the meteor man's got a stock Architect boss description, so you may want to check that on him and the other Brick boss, too - can't remember what his was. And there's a bit in mission 4 where I'm not entirely sure that my contact hasn't gotten thorned and is using me as a patsy, mostly because Desdemona pulls out a schtick she's shown no evidence of before and the help that shows up is a stock CoT spectral demon - at least you might be able to rename it as a generic ghost thing and maybe crack a joke about how ghosts can look like anything but they always decide to look like a big clawy dude with no legs.

I realize the villainside brokers are perhaps the bare-bonesinest of all the contacts in the game, and it's certainly possible they may have powers above and beyond their network of connections which we can use for a modest finder's fee, but the amulet and the ghost come out of pretty much nowhere without even a mission start clue to explain their presence.

Overall - ****. A simple exercise in heistonomics that plays well and has a little room to grow.

The requestening continues.

Tonight's arc: A full review of Diamonds are a Girl's Best Friend (114284). Verdict - ****. Review... lower in this thread? Seriously? I'm surprised you haven't got your own feedback thread for all this.

My current queue:

• A review of The Serpent Beyond the Horizon (515140)
• Reviews for The Doctor Returns (1140), Arena (456200), The Murders in the RWZ Morgue (452144), Et in Arcadia Ego (525441), and Project Dragon (522067), starting no earlier than April 19th.
• A re(re?)review of The Fractured Dreamer (498588)
• I'm also open to reviews by request, for anything you know is working.

If anybody wants in, the instructions are in the first post. I've recently made a few clarifications to it. A part of these instructions, perhaps pertinent to this post: I always vote 5 in-game, as it seems a bit uncouth to ask people to jump through hoops and then bomb their rating.

Something that isn't in the instructions but could stand to be said: CoH Mission Review isn't my private site. It's not even my site. Anybody's welcome to leave a review on anything, and it hardly has to be as long as the critical monstrosities I find myself putting out now and again.

@GlaziusF

Running this on a mid-20s stone/stone brute, +0/x2 with bosses on.

---

Huh. No description on the contact. Even if they're rather perfunctory I'd still like one.

I wonder if this is the sort of thing Neutral alignments were made for. I mean, the Vanguard works on a similar principle of "save the world, also for moneys and the power".

Oh hey, flooded Boomtown! ...and we have to find something here. Joy.

Populated by slag heaps.

And Coralax.

Oh! And "real Coralax". Looks like stone/earth assault and some kind of psyker as the minions. Ah, and an earth/thorn.

...even though that earth armor is probably supposed to be "sea floor", I can't help but think ice armor would work better.

Is this what I'm looking for is on the south island? Nope, just a diary in a sea chest. Someone stopped being coral but now they can't stop Calystix. I'll file that away for later.

A recolor of Metal Shift is hanging out, talking about how we shouldn't fight the encoralation because the next bloom is going to grab us anyway.

And Calystix himself makes a guest appearance. ...joy.

Oh hey, Scrapyard's here. And on my side, wreckin' faces.

Doc Buzzsaw as... a custom EB psi-blaster Coralax? Huh.

Well, it is up to the north island after all. No clue for this coral crown, though.

My contact talks it up, which makes not getting a clue all the weirder.

---

I go talk to the Legacy about borrowing a book, but Freaks in the shaper cult have already invaded. Including some kind of elec manip/psy lieutenant.

You should be aware that battles can start and spout their dialogue a long time before the heroes actually get there, so having one side ask for help is going to be a little premature.

Looks like the same Metal Shift reimagining from the first map is leading the raid. ...and they've already made off with the book we needed. Peachy.

---

Oh, I was expecting a Freaked-up warehouse or office, but the abandoned hospital is okay. I see another custom Freak, an elec control/empathy "nurse".

I pop the Legacy custom from the last map, and... the Sea Witch? She may be a custom, I don't think she's a boss in this level range, but she looks the part.

I rescue some Scrapyarders, who are real people with their own names and ambitions. But you should be aware that the game picks the singular objective for a multiple that you've stacked up pretty arbitrarily - it's telling me to rescue Fearlun even when he's already in my party.

Oh hey, no, Doc Buzzaw's just an EB Coralax. She's throwing urchins around, and there's no powerset that does that.

The Freakshow have helpfully written down their plan for world domination.

...or not, says my contact. Calystix did this somehow. I guess he knows what whiteboards are.

---

Apparently the plans are a lot more detailed than the clues gave rise to. My contact's extracted the precise location of all these spires.

Weirdly they're guarded by some kind of fish creatures instead of Coralax or "natural" Coralax as I might have expected. Are they on loan from some other arc? The name seems familiar.

Oh hey, a Coral Guardian as an actual boss. That's rare. There's some kind of wicked pop-in here so I don't actually see him the first time through.

---

Oh. Barracuda's been hiring us. Like, future Barracuda after she gave up her coral powers and realized she'd be doomed?

Time travel is so tricksy at times.

Oh dear, this cave. This cave is very atmospheric but it's always half-empty of normal spawns because most of them are plot, though objectives still show up in the dead zones.

I spring Barracuda, and only now remember that I'm carrying along the crown from the past in the future.

In fact, Barracuda, two spires, Calystix, and the book I'm looking for are down the "Maw of the Leviathan" passageway, leaving the remaining objectives down the normally empty "Eye of the Leviathan" passageway.

That includes my contact, who I rescue as the last objective. Shame, I wanted to see her real power.

---

Storyline - ***. Morality's kind of hard to nail down, isn't it? For me, this is how it works: there's a line between hero and villain. Vigilantes are willing to cross it for a good cause. Rogues aren't willing to cross it without one. An arc really doesn't deal with an alignment without the line getting crossed, one way or the other.

Barracuda's arguably acting like a rogue here, but beating up anarchists and Legally Distinct From Deep Ones doesn't exactly strike me as vigilante behavior. Really I'd call this Neutral, under the Vanguard definition of the term. But if the forums have taught me anything it's that everybody's got their own position on this.

It's clear enough what needs to get done in the missions and what effect that should have on the overarching plot, but the connection between missions is a bit more tenuous and I feel a bit more like an oblivious hired gun than is really comfortable. My contact sums up the plot development after a mission, but it doesn't actually seem to have any relation to the things I did or the clues I picked up during the mission. I've picked up a rather ornate and notable crown? The cult Freaks are actually only headquartered in this one chopshop and will respond to a show of force by backing off? I've found the location of the infectious coral farm? The contact narration says so, but the clues and the dialogue in the mission itself, while consistent with the plot, don't necessarily move it along.

Design - ***. The missions are generally set in very appropriate environments, though the abandoned hospital as the chopshop isn't the choice I'd have made. The wide variety of canon and custom enemies are all very well done, both visually and thematically powers-wise. And using the first mission as kind of an informal preview of the notable opposition is a touch I haven't really seen before.

But that runs the risk of backfiring a little. Somebody, like me, who wants to see how much above their weight they can punch and/or is interested in seeing what they have to say, may well have three knock-down-drag-out fights in the first mission with the big threats you get help for later in the arc. Kind of takes the edge off. Putting some representative bosses in might work a little better, because it's not like the fights in the first mission really matter outside of player interest in having them.

And while the customs are certainly distinctive and generally sensical, they're kind of overloaded. Each one gets maybe a single-digit number of spawns to show itself off, barring patrols which tend not to respect multipliers and just cough up three minions, and the fishmen and "true" Coralax are just kind of clumped together in the last mission with one or two helpers to aid in vigorously shredding them. They make for some nice visual variety but I didn't really get in enough fights with them to get a sense of their capabilities, which is a real shame given the effort that went into them in the first place.

Gameplay - ***. If I had to make a list of mission maps that were great for flavor but generally bad to play through, Flooded Boomtown, Abandoned Hospital, and Leviathan Cave would all be near the top. Boomtown is sprawling with a lot of places to hide glowies, the hospital makes the labyrinthine office maps even more cluttered and there's only one variation on it and it doesn't make a very good sort of headquarters because there are big gaps between spawn points, and the Leviathan Cave has some kind of heavy custom scripting so that only a small fraction of it actually autospawns, though objectives will show up in otherwise deserted stretches.

The customs aren't punishing by any stretch of the imagination, but the maps themselves can be rather draining, especially Leviathan Cave, which seems like a great location for a finale but often just sputters out, the final objective tucked in some desolate corner.

Detail - ***. Reiterating my complaint from the storyline section, there are a lot of things that apparently happen in missions, because they're called out in the debriefings, but we don't really get the clues that would support the assertions our contact is making.

I wouldn't be surprised if this arc was close to capacity given the heavy presence of customs, but if that was the case and clues were cut for space, to be recapped at the contact? I wouldn't choose to put the information on the contact who is withholding information from the hired gun.

Overall - ***. An arc that takes steps to put on a very good show, but also one whose strengths are in many senses working against it. The scenery is well-suited to the story, but the maps themselves often don't play very satisfyingly. There's a wide variety of well-realized customs on offer, but none of them show up often enough to get a really good sense for how they operate. After every mission the contact takes special care to spell out and reorient the plot, but many times she draws on information not obviously present in the missions, and it doesn't make much sense that she should be taking special care in the first place.

Well hey, we got requests! So here goes.

Tonight's arc: A full review of Save the Diver, Save the World (112023). Verdict - ***. Review lower in this thread.

My current queue:

• A review of The Serpent Beyond the Horizon (515140), no earlier than April 10th.
• Reviews for The Doctor Returns (1140), Arena (456200), The Murders in the RWZ Morgue (452144), Diamonds are a Girl's Best Friend (114284), Et in Arcadia Ego (525441), and Project Dragon (522067)
• I'm also open to reviews by request, for anything you know is working.

If anybody wants in, the instructions are in the first post. I've recently made a few clarifications to it. A part of these instructions, perhaps pertinent to this post: I always vote 5 in-game, as it seems a bit uncouth to ask people to jump through hoops and then bomb their rating.

Something that isn't in the instructions but could stand to be said: CoH Mission Review isn't my private site. It's not even my site. Anybody's welcome to leave a review on anything, and it hardly has to be as long as the critical monstrosities I find myself putting out now and again.

@GlaziusF

Running this on a fire/energy tanker, +1/x2 with bosses on.

---

Well, this is an auspicious start. Hero-for-hire wants some help corralling the Devouring Earth on account of how bad they stink.

Though he could use a bio.

He's getting absolutely leveled by some rock monsters (shame the higher-level DE have absolutely no variety to them).

And hey, it's Pyriss, disguised as a mysterious Devoured. After she's down some spires pop up in the cave to block the exit.

---

Huh. Uni basement map. Haven't seen that one for a while.

Some of the samples have broken free... and judging by the spire that just popped up, I am now a beloved toy of Hamixom.

---

Researchers have gone out to gather samples, and oh hey it's eleven things to do in Eden. Well, let's get to it.

Actually the spires are pretty visible, and the researchers are being subject to Crey's open disclosure policies, so their escorts stand out from the rocks. This was actually a pretty solid outdoor mission.

---

Bad news: one of the researchers accidentally processed a sample from me instead of the DE.

Worse news: apparently I've been contaminated. Wonder how this is going to play out.

Oh hey, more of Crey's open disclosure policies. Well, this'll be interesting.

After freeing a wildlife biologist, I plow through some more Crey and drink up the cure.

---

But the DE come back and completely trash the lab. My contact's there to help me run them off (with a guest appearance from Pyriss) but the damage is done.

---

Storyline - ****. Fairly straightforward but a little more sinister than the typical DE arc, what with the looming presence of Hamidon and all. There's one thing I have a little quibble with, though.

The Devouring is treated as a single plague with a single cure, but there are at least two extant named vectors for it that we know of: the Will of the Earth and the Unity Plague, in addition to whatever they put into Terra. The Will of the Earth has a touch of magic to it, indicating that Hamidon may not be merely biological in nature, though many of his minions respond to biological signals.

Nothing wrong with Hamidon coming out with yet another new strain and just fighting to deny the cure for it, but it doesn't make much sense that what we're dealing with in this arc is an absolute cure.

Design - ***. The choice of maps is good, the rock spires are a nice recurring element, and it's fun to see what new scrape my contact has gotten himself into.

But this arc has a really unusual level range and I don't really get why it's there.

I mean, of course I get the simple mechanical reason: the DE don't have many non-giant monster big threats aside from Terra and Devoured Pyriss, and Terra's just a big green Devoured. But that's the sort of thing custom enemies are wonderful for.

At the levels this arc runs, both Crey and the Devouring Earth are at their most boring. Crey is Tanks and Protectors, the DE are just rocks. Using a custom or customs instead of just Pyriss would let the fights be a lot more interesting.

Also I was expecting something interesting to show up in the lab in mission 4, while I was getting the cure. Hive Spires talking to me or something. As it is nothing really comes of the infection; the mission's not any different from one I would run to pick up a cure for my contact. If you're going to put the plot point in at least get a little flavor out of it.

Gameplay - *****. Crey and the DE are stock and hardly frustrating, and the outdoor mission with a ton of objectives was a relative snap thanks to clever choice of objectives and escorts. (Though maybe the Crey guys could stand to be waving around a medical recorder or something to spit out particles.)

Detail - ****. Mostly stock descriptions; very little that needed explanation here. The clues that showed up were sensible and serviceable.

Overall - ****. A good arc, but the titular plot development barely registers at all, and the choice of Pyriss rather than some custom DE makes the fights a lot less varied than either of the two marquee enemy groups are capable of producing.

Another time interval, another random arc.

Previously played:

A Warrior's Journey: the Flower Knight Task Force (260284). Verdict - *****
A Tex-Mex Mess (127677). Verdict - ***
Quoth the Raven (74617). Verdict - ***
Simple Times (70801). Verdict - ***

Tonight's arc: A full review of Being Devoured (112023). Verdict - ****. Review lower in this thread.

My current queue:

• Random reviews! Due to the overeager text censor I can't be sure that any random arc I encounter will actually function as originally intended. Text, enemies, and entire enemy groups can be replaced depending on what the censor objects to. In that case I'll message the arc author and call it a night.
• I'm still open to reviews by request, for anything you know is working.

If anybody wants in, the instructions are in the first post. I've recently made a few clarifications to it. A part of these instructions, perhaps pertinent to this post: I always vote 5 in-game, as it seems a bit uncouth to ask people to jump through hoops and then bomb their rating.

Something that isn't in the instructions but could stand to be said: CoH Mission Review isn't my private site. It's not even my site. Anybody's welcome to leave a review on anything, and it hardly has to be as long as the critical monstrosities I find myself putting out now and again.

@GlaziusF

Running this on a single-digit beam/time corruptor, old heroic at +0/x1 with bosses on.

---

Low-tier villain throws in with a low-tier gang. Mission 1: beat up security and grab some Hellion swag.

Everything happens pretty straightforwardly - the Hellions are also trying to get their stuff back, but private security is handling them just fine.

Have to wonder how high in the ranks my contact really is if he's still trying to come up with a name.

---

And a quick little raid on a police station to grab some more gear, plant a bomb, and get out in 15 minutes. Carved through a few ambushes but I made it.

---

Aw. Our contact wants to believe Marrowsnap is invincible. You want to tell him or should I?

He's sounding off right when I enter, for some reason, and then... oh, hey. Hellion elite boss. Might want to put in a warning about that, though he's one of the low-level ones that I think the Mook guy in Port Oakes makes you fight.

---

My contact has chosen a name for me. I wonder if I should disabuse him of this.

Anyhow he's got a list for me that could stand to be a mission start clue, but eh. Securing a Superadine shipment.

Or deciding I've had enough of the Skulls and blowing it all up. That works too.

Big ship, patrolling Cage guards (had no idea they really spawned this low, but I guess so) and it all goes down easy.

---

Raid a Longbow safehouse, ransom Arachnos tech back to Arachnos. Yeah, I'd say my contact's getting just a little too big for his darktalon bloodbritches.

As I free the Arachnos and wreck their stolen tech, the Skulls attempt to stop me. Key word: attempt.

No souvenir, weirdly enough.

---

Storyline - ****. I liked the way this story ended: the Skulls, with unforeseen help from some heavy villain muscle (the player), decide to bat suicidally above their weight, leading the muscle to bail before things get too out of hand.

I wish it hadn't taken that turn so suddenly, though. Everything we were doing previously seemed like pretty normal low-level villain stuff, and there wasn't really a sense that this would all come back to bite us. Having things start to turn sour before the big stupid plan shows up would make the transition seem a little more natural.

Though it's not really a deal-breaker. I mean, it's not like stupid plans out of nowhere don't make sense coming from this contact, and it's not like he's got a record of stellar life choices up until now. Still, it's entertaining to see things go wrong, even if they're going wrong all over the player's face.

Design - ****. The missions seemed rather heavy on patrols, often largely to the exclusion of normal spawns. Patrols and objectives in Architect are generally not in addition to the normal spawns on mission maps, but instead replace them.

I'm not sure why all the patrols, though. They don't have interesting things to say and it doesn't seem that the places I visit should be quite so heavy on patrols.

Gameplay - ****. A warning about 3K Kelvin would have been nice. But more than that, the high number of patrols means the concentration of enemies is very, very uneven. This is especially a caution for low-level characters, who don't really have the bag of tricks high-level characters do that lets them survive things like fighting one spawn and a patrol when another patrol drops from the balcony above.

Detail - ****. Not a lot of out-there customization going on that would need explaining; most detail is stock but the few unique things look alright. I would like to get a souvenir of this whole crazy misadventure, though.

Overall - ****. A good newbie arc with a solid plot and a little room for improvement.

Another time interval, another random arc.

Previously played:

The Brawler and the Bawler (1053). Verdict - ***.
The Casualties of War (241496). Verdict - ****.
Tainted Waters (69315). Verdict - *.
Death for Dollars! (1050). Verdict - ****.
Superhero Downtime (135096). Verdict - ****.
Assault on Aru Prime (174586). Verdict - ***.

Tonight's arc: A full review of So You Want To Be A Skull (319654). Verdict - ****. Review lower in this thread.

My current queue:

• Random reviews! Due to the overeager text censor I can't be sure that any random arc I encounter will actually function as originally intended. Text, enemies, and entire enemy groups can be replaced depending on what the censor objects to. In that case I'll message the arc author and call it a night.
• I'm still open to reviews by request, for anything you know is working.

If anybody wants in, the instructions are in the first post. I've recently made a few clarifications to it. A part of these instructions, perhaps pertinent to this post: I always vote 5 in-game, as it seems a bit uncouth to ask people to jump through hoops and then bomb their rating.

Something that isn't in the instructions but could stand to be said: CoH Mission Review isn't my private site. It's not even my site. Anybody's welcome to leave a review on anything, and it hardly has to be as long as the critical monstrosities I find myself putting out now and again.