GlaziusF

Tonight's arc: The Casualties of War (241496). Verdict - ****. Review in MA Forums thread.

My current queue:

• A review of Tis Nobler in the Mind (257226), no earlier than April 29.
• Reviews of the rest of the Labors of Rustam trilogy (59243), (78130), no earlier than April 18.
• A review of Dhahabu Kingdom and the Indelible Curse of Hate (367872).
• A review of Twisted Knives (397769).

And if anybody else wants in, the instructions are in the first post.

Review as part of the CoHMR Aggregator project.

@GlaziusF

Rereview as there have apparently been significant changes.

Playing this on my level 50 spine/regen scrapper, +1 x2 with bosses on.

---

Huh. Okay, so it turns out I did do something worthwhile in the last arc after all. Good to know.

So now we're trying to turn the tables and feed the Rikti false information.

On the one hand, I like the idea of less awesome recolored Longbow standing in for the Vanguard. On the other... poor Longbow. Then again, if this was the best tech on offer at the time maybe their current incarnations actually are an upgrade.

"How'd that hero get in here? Get her, before he ruins everything!" I think you missed something there.

Interesting wrapup.

Things I didn't know before but found out accidentally: it seems like the mission complete popup will actually show up in the mission description you get by clicking the "exploding i" button when the mission's complete.

(I was looking for what those coordinates meant.)

---

I enter the next mission and... damn. Total chaos. The boss gets taken out by the base turrets while I'm still pinned down dealing with the approximately four Rikti bosses that have showed up inside the bunker from one source or another.

The destructibles are too far out from the bunker to complete without any involvement on my part, so that's a bit of good news at least. But the heroes can get a bit close, and I had the devil of a time freeing Captain Superior before I hopped back into the bunker and found the last element of his escort tangled up with another two bosses.

The hell did they all come from?

My accomplishments from last time continue to be treated like they were breakthroughs. Captain Superior's also mentioning the alpha/omega plan, which I don't remember from last time. Makes me wonder.

---

Now this I don't remember at all.

So McKnight has been making all these bodybags, huh? Dude must have a serious hate on; then again the Midnight Squad got freakin' wrecked during the same action the last arc put me in for.

There's a stone altar on the second level, long before I find McKnight. It's not active, either, Hoo boy. Odd.

Man, some of these bodies show up in the weirdest places. Found a couple actually in burning parts of the base. Makes me wonder if Alistair is actually the one who put all the flames here.

Ah, I see. It's an emergency backup if you fail this destructo. ...man, how does that work? I admit I like the idea, but I didn't see it pop up in the navbar and the mission completes when I successfully defend it.

Well, anyway, time to try and save the day.

---

"Sarah Lexis is an expert in meta-human physiology and head of the research staff at Paragon University. Because of her expertise, and latent meta-human skills, she became your contact by default."

My... contact? Is there a part three to this series that's eluding me?

The elite boss fight is a little harrowing because I don't know what's an AoE and what's not and keep getting her caught in the blasts, but afterwards it's pretty smooth.

The debrief should probably be in a different font or italicized or both, since it's internal monologue.

---

Wait. Statesman's aid? Suicide assignment?

Okay, so this is part of the alpha team action. But I don't remember anything like that in the briefing for mission three. Cap's clues seem to hint at it, very obliquely, but that's about the extent of it.

Or... maybe it isn't? It's an action to buy time so Alpha Team can put their plan into motion, which is to... engage the Rikti to keep them occupied?

Which is what's just happened?

Or is the Alpha/Omega maneuver still a long way off?

Hmm. And the souvenir says it was Cap's clasp that did the recording, though for some reason I thought it was Blastion's ring. That was a communicator, right?

---

Storyline - ****. You've done a much better job of putting my actions in the context of SOLUS. Few things I'm less sure about though. First, as far as I knew, Lazon wasn't actually killed directly by the Rikti so much as contained until he had no choice but INFERNOVA. I think it was the opening popup to the last mission that mentioned this.

Second, how exactly did the giant laser-spewing dropship crash? I can't see it go down through Cap's recorder unless it's what hits the building. I realize I can't exactly be one-shot by a giant laser (unless you decide to make this a defense task on an impossible timer with the laser going off when time runs out) but it just feels like luck to have the ship gone.

Third, Cap only hinted at it roundabout, but what role exactly does this play in the who Alpha/Omega plan? I thought going into this I'd actually get to play a bit of a role in the struggle of poor doomed Alpha Team but this seems to have gone on a bit before that.

Design - ****. Things have gotten a bit more manageable since the last go 'round. The large tent map is gone and all the hunting with it, replaced (?) with a burning lab with much more active rescuees. Or did it go from large tent to bunker?

The bunker map's a bit of a problem still, in that the turrets can complete several objectives without hero intervention, and with all the fights going on there's potential to have a big clump of bosses crowded around the entrance. Why not use an actual Rikti bunker? They'd been building those things for a while before the invasion kicked off.

Gameplay - ****. Pretty solid. The only hiccup was trying to find the necessary mobs to complete objectives in the bunker map when they'd been scattered about by turret fire.

Detail - *****. Aside from a couple of typos as noted and the somewhat inexplicable description on Dr. Lexis, not much wrong here. My worry with the story is more where it fits into the larger picture; the detail does a good job of fixing it where it is.

Overall - ****. Much improved from its initial incarnation, with the problematic maps gone and a little more active role in the overall action for my hero. I still have misgivings about that bunker map and the way the turrets can scatter and/or complete objectives.

Tonight's arc: Drakule vs. The Werewolf Bikers from Hell! (340316). Verdict - ***. Review in MA Forums thread.

My current queue:

• A review of Tis Nobler in the Mind (257226), no earlier than April 29.
• A rereview of The Casualties of War (241496), no earlier than April 12.
• Reviews of the rest of the Labors of Rustam trilogy (59243), (78130), no earlier than April 18.
• A review of Dhahabu Kingdom and the Indelible Curse of Hate (367872).

And if anybody else wants in, the instructions are in the first post.

@GlaziusF

Running this on my level 50 stone/ice tanker, +1 x1 with bosses on.

---

Okay, an illegal salvage operation trying to remove Rikti UXBs. That can't possibly go wrong. My contact shares my skepticism and she wants to know why people are sending a man out to do a Clockwork's job.

Ah. Human supremacists. Mostly mundane weapons, though they do have some Vanguard sympathizers who are a little more of a challenge.

---

The opening briefing seems a bit circuitous. I don't think Borea needs to tell me exactly how they planned this whole sting, only the specific part that's gone wrong -- their token resistence got pocketed.

Dammit, Fusionette! Okay, time to go be a hero.

Interesting: Humanity First seems to have converted some Rikti drones, who try to reacquire Fusionette.

Not so interesting: I find Fusionette in the sewer and have to lead her out through the tunnels and office parts of this tripartite map.

...oh wait, that's all? There's nothing in the big room at the end? Kind of a letdown.

---

Now time to break into a building and destroy the junk inside.

Hmm. These Burners aren't worth any XP. Just flamethrowers? I'll give you the same advice I gave some other guy with the same exact setup: use fire blast instead. You could probably give him some gauntlets or something.

And Gadgeteers. Rad/rad defender types, which isn't the first thing that comes to mind when I think "Gadgeteer".

So taking out this surprise heavy assault suit (seriously, it's an EB, drop a warning) completes the "salvaged machinery" but not "kitbashed machinery" objective, even though it had kitbashed in its title.

A boss and her escort spawn inside of a sheet-metal column. Fortunately they pop out when they start fighting me. And just short of the Freaklympics award room is the "kitbashed machinery" - a Robotics boss henchman. I was expecting an HVAS, so this is pleasant.

The human boss talked about shipping things out to the Isles. Looks like I'm going on a road trip.

---

Be nice to get some warning about the timer before I accepted the mission.

Also since you seem to favor verbose briefings, might I suggest highlighting the important parts in color? You can do it even if you've maxed out the text, as long as you're using stock colors -- just select and apply.

Two more Lieutenants, a Medic with some Empathy, and a... more different Gadgeteer? This one's an elec/elec tanker.

The (elite) boss is a DB/Ninja, who again I would appreciate a warning about, but who isn't a bad fight.

There's mention of someone named Partisan, who I guess is a teaser for some kind of sequel. I'd certainly be interested in playing one.

---

Storyline - *****. Simple, but solid. About the only complaint I have is that mission 2 seems to be more reactionary -- it doesn't really show off much of the enemy group, and it doesn't leave anything in the way of persistent clues. I might want to know what they took, at least, assuming they weren't just grabbing everything they could.

Overall it's a decent first part to what I suspect will be an ongoing story. It sets up some activities of a group without necessarily giving us the whole picture, because it only dealt with a small part of them.

Design - ****. You have two options with the Burners - fire blast, or wait for I17. Either or both, really.

The second mission is kind of a letdown. There's Fusionette to rescue but the end room is empty, though I was expecting some kind of boss fight. If all that you've got in the custom group are male and female version of the same boss, I can understand not wanting to do that three missions in a row. Rogue Vanguard or Longbow maybe?

Gameplay - ***. Leading Fusionette back through three layers of mission was a bit boring. But the two surprise EBs and the surprise timer were the real offenders here.

The DBlade/Nin not so much, but the heavy assault suit can eliminate regen and send any non-defense set into a cascading -defense loop of undodgeable pain.

Detail - ****. All the rank-and-file enemies in the new group start out with a giant block of information about Humanity First in general, and then a single line at the end specific to the enemy. Seems a bit of overkill. We could get some general enemy information as an opening/ending clue to some mission, with shorter descriptions on the rank and file.

There's also a lot of text in the briefings, so in addition to adding warnings about elite bosses and the timer, you should call out important information with color highlighting. Biggest offender is Borea's detailing the trap the Vanguard laid in mission 2 - it might be nice to know, but the important elements to the mission are how it went wrong and what I need to fix.

Overall - ****. Nothing major wrong with the story or the enemy group. It just needs a little more in the way of warning and highlighting and a little better end to mission 2 than just going through the whole place backwards.

Tonight's arc: Salvage Rights (366579). Verdict - ****. Review lower in this thread.

My current queue:

• Reviews of (randomly chosen) Tis Nobler in the Mind (257226), Drakule vs. The Werewolf Bikers from Hell! (340316), starting no earlier than April 20.
• A rereview of The Casualties of War (241496), no earlier than April 12.
• Reviews of the rest of the Labors of Rustam trilogy (59243), (78130), no earlier than April 18.

And if anybody else wants in, the instructions are in the first post.

Tonight's arc: Suppression (374481). Verdict - ***. Review in MA Forums Thread.

My current queue:

• Reviews of (randomly chosen) Tis Nobler in the Mind (257226), Drakule vs. The Werewolf Bikers from Hell! (340316), starting no earlier than April 20.
• A rereview of The Casualties of War (241496), no earlier than April 12.
• Reviews of the rest of the Labors of Rustam trilogy (59243), (78130), no earlier than April 18.
• A review of Salvage Rights (366579).

And if anybody else wants in, the instructions are in the first post.

@GlaziusF

Review done as part of the CoHMR Aggregator project.

Running this on a single-digit will/DMelee tanker, +0 x1 with bosses on.

---

Credible Toto. I'm impressed.

I'm a little unclear on exactly what Dr. Aeon's challenge prescribed, but this initial briefing would mean a little more to me if she actually mentioned that these heroes were her friends, as her description indicates.

Oh. Okay. It's in the sendoff. I actually think it'd make a better introduction.

Wow. I'm not going to hold this against you, but all the allies in this mission are pushing me down to like 2 XP a minion. The setpieces are kinda interesting for what that's worth.

---

15 XP per minion in the next mission. The ally penalty can get that bad? Crazy.

Anyway, the Winter Horde are here. And it seems like Valentina didn't search for Cerebella completely in vain - I find a note she left about some kind of power suppression plan.

---

Lovin' my ghost slaying axe against these spectral pirates. Like a knife through butter.

The pamphlet doesn't seem like much of a clue in its own right. Maybe if the language was more generic-yet-relevant. "Feeling powerless? Like something's missing in your life?"

---

Man. It seems like there are silent ambushes in this next mission, triggered by examining the glowies, if these neat rows of Circle that sprint out and fire at me are any indication.

That's a nasty trick to pull. Doubly nasty for the single-digit characters who are supposed to be playing this arc.

Hmm. Mission complete, but I don't seem to have any actual clues, just this guy's promise in dialogue to help.

---

Last mission: recovering the embodiments of these hero's powers, because all that's been stolen is their strength of will.

I grab Valentina's locket, and I wonder if these are actually gifts my contact gave the heroes. The next two seem more generic and disabuse me of that notion.

I really don't get the martial arts on the boss here. If you wanted a melee set Dark Melee would probably make more sense.

---

Storyline - ****. While this is definitely a take-off of the Wizard of Oz, there wasn't much in the way of plot elements there just because the Wizard of Oz had them and serving no other purpose.

The one dubious link in the whole chain is going from a pamphlet found discarded in a ghost ship to visit the person described on it. That honestly seems a bit farfetched. If the text on the pamphlet seems generic but applicable then that's at least a hint this guy is worth investigating. Maybe there might be a temporary suspicion that he's working for the Wicked Witch of the West (WWW) to steal powers.

Design - ***. I have to level with you: I'm not sure why there are Munchkins in the first mission. There are patrols and allied hostage groups and the occasional battle, but it doesn't seem like they add very much, especially since they don't show up again.

I'm also a little clueless as to why The Brood has the weird mix of enemies it does. Okay, so you've got slime monsters and rock monsters and lava monsters and snake monsters and spider... robots... and the Clockwork, and human Arachnos soldiers?

What role do the Tuatha, Winter Horde, and Spectral Pirates play in all this? At least in the latter two cases The Brood seems to be talking about how this enemy group is being used to contain the weakened hero. So why have a Brood at all? Why not just have the missions be straight Tuatha/Horde/Pirates and then roll them all together for the last mission?

Gameplay - ****. Aside from what I suspect are silent ambushes in the fourth mission, pretty straightforward fights against canon groups.

Detail - ***. The story may not bring up elements of Oz just for the sake of doing so, but I can't see any other reason for the Munchkin knockoffs in the first mission. I mean, there are already little humanoids in Croatoa who have an established relationship to the Tuatha and exist at all levels. And while the Red Caps probably wouldn't ordinarily be allied, maybe they're more worried that the Tuatha are leaving their control and joining the WWW than about some lowbie hero.

The Brood also retain their stock descriptions, or at least every member I checked did. I don't know how you are for space, but especially for such a disparate group of enemies it's not easy to come up with a unifying theme or motivation looking just at canon names and canon descriptions.

Overall - ***. There was a small hiccup in the story, but most of this is over the character of the opposition. The Brood are the WWW's inner circle, but what are its members supposed to represent? Actual canon enemies she's converted or her own creations? And what part in her plans do the Tuatha, Winter Horde, and Spectral Pirates play? Do they just happen to be in the same place at the same time or is there something more going on?

It sounds like either you hit a really weird bug or perhaps uploaded an earlier draft of the mission by mistake. I definitely didn't see the desks become active until the boss was damaged in mission 3, and the jailbreak in mission 4 played out exactly as described.

Tonight's arc: Made to Wave the Flag (384776). Verdict - *****. Review in MA Forums Thread.

My current queue:

• Reviews of (randomly chosen) Tis Nobler in the Mind (257226), Drakule vs. The Werewolf Bikers from Hell! (340316), starting no earlier than April 20.
• A review of Suppression (374481).
• A rereview of The Casualties of War (241496), no earlier than April 12.
• Reviews of the rest of the Labors of Rustam trilogy (59243), (78130), no earlier than April 18.
• A review of Salvage Rights (366579).

And if anybody else wants in, the instructions are in the first post.

And just to add on - cohmissionreview.com is not my site. I don't own it and I don't control who posts on it. Anybody's welcome to go and look and play any arc they'd like and leave a rating. That is, in fact, the point.

@GlaziusF

Running this one on my level 50 spine/regen scrapper, +1 x2 with bosses on.

---

Mender without a contact description. That's a new touch but it'd be nice to see all the same.

Okay, temporal anomaly in ancient Persia. I'm not sure the Mender needs to go into a giant wall-of-text explanation about the cultural significance of the place.

But okay. Let's save the past.

The Circle are surrounding Rustam for some reason. Thought they were in hiding about this time, licking their wounds. (Also thought they were more based in America.)

The Snakes are roaming around, with their original "from Mercy Island" description, though obviously it doesn't apply here.

The boss pops Unstoppable and manages to kill Rustam before it wears out. Peachy.

Fortunately most of my rare clicks are still up and I can take him down in the meanwhile.

The end clue is some sort of jeweled dagger, but I don't know exactly where I picked it up or who from. It seems to be some sort of promise from the Circle.

---

On to phase two.

Huh. The witch cave. With... Hydra? I didn't think they'd be interested in this sort of thing, unless they're supposed to be giant plant golems instead.

Anyway, the banished pantheon are playing minor roles here, and the boss is...

Illusion control/plant control. Two controls. Worse yet, two confuses. That's enough to punch through an ordinary break free, or at least the long-duration illusion one is stacking.

Once I'm confused, my options are basically "wait to die" or "hit self-destruct", and the latter one wins.

Back at it with a handful of break frees, and Rustam not getting blown about by Hurricane, she wilts quickly.

Why does the system think I'm sending these ancient villains to the modern Zig? That seems counter-productive if I'm trying to reassert the integrity of the timestream.

---

So, ancient soldiers and the Rularuu. The brutes have a treading-water animation. I'm surprised.

The Rularuu guarding Rustam are talking about some kind of "obsidian lord". No idea what they're on about.

The boss is a Kat/SR who leads things off by popping Elude. After I decide to die and then wait until it wears off, he's a pretty good fight.

Looks like your standard elder gods at work here, promising the people who work for them the honor of dying first.

The return briefing from the mender seems to be more my character's internal narration than her talking, so it should probably be in a different color or font.

---

Ice castle! The Spirit City's pretty fitting for this.

Only problem with Devouring Earth at this level is that they're all Granites, meaning they all drop cairns, so I always have to squash one of them when a new one pops up.

Anyway, apparently the DE got hold of some Fifth Column doomsday device which is being used to pull this whole thing off. The boss is some kind of Ice Assault/Pain, which at least means he has no tier 9s to drop on us.

---

So, next mission is a giant boss rush. Another DE flame devoured, a Mind/Spines archvillain (lot of fun dodging HIS attacks with the Rularuu debuffing the hell out of me)...

I leave to replenish my inspiration stock, and then I head down the other tunnel at the start. Sure enough, there's Rustam, and the doom magus.

Sonic/DMiasma. He... opens with Dreadful Wail. Hoo boy. I guess he popped Aim too, because it's enough to one-shot me.

The master demon is ice control/psy assault. The autohit confusion is a bit of a pain but overall he can't quite hit as hard as the other stuff in here. All that's left is an Aspect of Despair...

Oh. Stock Adamastor. That's easy. Finding him, though... not everybody actually knows that there's an overlook on that room, or how to get there (up the stairs at the side) since when you fight Requiem here most of the action takes place down in the big arena that MA won't spawn anything in.

Apparently there's a claw still pointed at my heart -- no clue if that's from the mission or just from the last fight I had with Adamastor.

---

Storyline - ***. I have two big problems here: one about the story and one about the way it's presented.

The problem I have with the story can be summed up as "when do these people come from?" The CoT and the Banished Pantheon both definitely predate human civilization as we know it. The Devouring Earth, not so much. And the Rularuu... well. There's a Midnighter called the Dream Doctor who refers to Rularuu as his counterpart. Given how enamored this game is of the "actually a transformed human" plot point, I wouldn't be surprised if he was actually somebody from, if not this century, then this millennium, who (mis)used an artifact and became, well, Rularuu. Even if it's only the DE from modern days, though, there's still the issue of freezing the progress of human civilization with products of the progress of human civilization. That just seems like it's inviting paradox over to play. Maybe the elder gods behind all this don't have any problem with everything vanishing in a puff of logic, I don't know. But it'd be nice to see it acknowledged.

The problem I have with the way it's presented is that the first four missions are gradual introductions to the various factions making up this enemy group and the last mission is BOSS RUSH BEAT 5 AVs SAVE EVERYTHING GO GO GO. The net result is that the various minor lieutenants actually get proportionally more development than the prime movers, who get all of one little letter and then a shared mission, and as a result don't really make a very big impression on me, at least plot-wise. Since there are going to be more arcs featuring these guys, why not have a few of them absent from the finale?

Design - ****. As far as I can tell, this arc makes pretty good use of unique maps and existing enemies to set the stage. A couple of things in the last mission -- Adamastor on the overlook isn't obvious, as noted, and it seems like the Doom Magus has an escort of ice demons rather than CoT, if he's supposed to be the Circle representative. The monolithic rock DE are honestly a little grating, since they basically just swarm around you swiping. I wonder why the DE suddenly stop being so varied at high levels, and it's not exactly something you can help, but even though the Hydra and the Winter Horde are also just single boss-lieut-minion pairings I always feel like the DE lose something by going to just rock monsters.

Gameplay - **. Waiting twice for tier 9s to run out so bosses were actually damageable is actually about two times too many. Getting railed by an Aim into Dreadful Wail combo (that passes the usual one-shot protection) is kind of an unavoidable death. I think the only custom boss who didn't have a wait-to-run-out tier 9, a confuse/terrorize, or Aim/Build Up was the lce demon lieutenant in mission 4. And that's just a recipe for a lot of frustration and/or inspiration chugging.

Detail - ***. Now that you can edit the faction names and descriptions of standard enemies, I think this arc would really benefit from that. I mean, I inspected the bosses in the final mission expecting to get some clues about how these disparate factions came together or operated or something, aaaand instead I got the pick of Bartlett's Familiar Quotations.

I mean, that'd be a nice touch if I actually knew enough about these guys. But I don't. And if you don't want to establish them in their descriptions, then you can establish them through their minions - ice demons, plant demons (hydra from mission 2), maybe some kind of Doomguard recolored Circle, the time-displaced Devouring Earth, and whatever splinter faction of the Rularuu this is.

Overall - ***. An arc that kind of runs its plot into a wall, in that the initial pace is slow and deliberate and then a whole bunch of things are abruptly packed into one final mission. The bosses are really more unfair than challenging, with Aim/Build Up and various tier 9s that give more of an incentive to run off and stare at a wall than wade in and fight. The overall idea is something interesting with Ouroboros that I haven't really seen before, and the enemy groups are often an interesting mix, but they could stand to be reflavored now that you can do that with stock enemies.

Tonight's arc that I swear I actually will run tonight (dang lost weekend) and ended up running last night and writing up today: The Labors of Rustam I: The Cold and The Dark (54293). Verdict - ***. Review lower in this thread.

My current queue:

• Reviews of (randomly chosen) Tis Nobler in the Mind (257226), Drakule vs. The Werewolf Bikers from Hell! (340316), Made to Wave the Flag (384776), starting no earlier than April 5.
• A review of Suppression (374481).
• A rereview of The Casualties of War (241496), no earlier than April 12.
• Reviews of the rest of the Labors of Rustam trilogy (59243), (78130), no earlier than April 18.
• A review of Salvage Rights (366579).

And if anybody else wants in, the instructions are in the first post.

@GlaziusF

Running this one on a single-digit will/DMelee tanker, +0 x1 with bosses on.

---

Huh. First time I've seen what happens when you use $supergroup on somebody who doesn't have one. Not that I want to ding you for it.

So, okay. Time to go patrol Atlas.

Aw, man. Finding stuff on an outdoor map is kind of a pain.

Chaining on an outdoor map? Agh agh agh.

Okay, here's a thing you should know: the placement options don't mean anything on an outdoor map. It doesn't recognize any of the locations.

...escort on an outdoor map, and his dialogue warns that he's bugged. Ay yi yi...

And his rescue chains into both a boss and a car to find somewhere?

Four chains. That's practically a clear all.

(Also to kinda add insult to injury, the orange exit rectangles don't actually make you exit from these stage, so the bug didn't really need to be called out.)

Anyhow. All this chaos was in pursuit of some kind of pendant.

And despite all the clues, there's this giant debrief about a skull war, the artifact, and a pending invasion. Wouldn't this have made a little sense to show up as a briefing for the next mission?

---

Huh. Meteor Atlas?

Dr. Empath gives me a briefing about the Skulls setting off even more powerful bombs, and tells me about a Skull boss with a detonator, but I don't see either of those objectives in my navbar.

Ah, Okay. Freeing an Electra-Lass who seems to be suffering a slight S shortage gets me the objective.

Boss drops. With a buggy-looking defeat message that seems to be an attempt at humor?

And then I have to beat up some bombs anyway.

A second giant chain on an outdoor map in as many missions.

This one just seemed like kinda filler, though. It was just a Skull gettin' mad on account of last mission. Nobody really gave up more information on whatever this artifact was.

---

And the MAGI vaults get raided again, and... another outdoor map? Ay yi yi.

Oh. No. It's just a burning office.

Okay, there's some boss-level AR/MA guy just kicking around in the lobby, a desk with a phone that doesn't seem to do anything, three more desks marked "Superadine concentrate" that I can't interact with yet, and a boss on the top floor surrounded by stone monoliths which are the artifacts I came for, I guess?

Halfway through the boss fight the cops show up. AR/dev customs, looks like. For some weird reason the desks show up in the navbar at this point, as well. After it's over some 'Chosen' Hellions show up... in what seems to be a group made up only of lieutenants.

In addition to being a bit of a challenge for a possibly pre-DO character, they don't give as much for XP because they're missing a rank of enemy.

And...

Oh, wonderful.

Because of the vagaries of the fight, the cops have gotten parked in a door only one character-width wide and I can't get back up the stairs and into the office to click the glowies I need to click to complete the mission.

Restarting...

Did you mean for the pendant pieces to be on the bottom floor and the Superadine to be in the boss room? Either way it wouldn't avoid the problem I just had, but I wanted to point that out in case. "Back" seems to mean "Middle", and vice-versa, when it comes to glowies.

And because this mission is coded "defeat all", I have to take out the patrol on the bottom floor that's got stuck in an office, which presumably you put in just to hint at what's coming next.

I get an end clue which is a weird mix of the mission briefing, the CoT chatter I heard during the mission about some kind of gate (and I'm sorry, but Realm/Gate just makes me thing of .hack//WHATEVER) and the Hellions' planned breakout.

---

So about that breakout.

The prison yard is empty. A handful of Hellions patrolling it say their job is done.

Ms Liberty didn't seem to think much of the villains' chances. So what went wrong?

Uh. Okay. Here's what I actually do.

Run inside. There's a boss in the escape tunnel. Fight him. He talks about planting explosives. Detonate one barrel of explosives inside, look around, head back outside, find the other barrel near the entrance, detonate it.

Now there's something about a corrupt guard. Search the prison yard, find him. He spouts off about a getaway van. Search the prison yard, find it. Halfway through three PPD minions spawn.

Finally I get an objective about the security computer. Search the prison yard, don't find it, head back inside, it's in the last cell on the right.

The end clue seems to think this required about three fewer trips through the escape tunnel than I actually took. At least I actually managed to prevent the breakout.

---

So the last mission is to stop the enhanced Hellions from running riot in Perez Park anyway.

Patrols of Hellions, Skulls, and allied custom cops and... Lost? Really? And HYDRA? Really?

So I find the SS/something guy I was looking to find, who reveals the Hellions on the map. Unheralded, I also find the "ledengary" (according to his description) Sister Flame.

And with the drugs reclaimed, and the Circle talking about heading for a sewer somewhere...

Oh wait. That was mission 5. Arc over.

Ms. Liberty's debrief talks about the High Council. ...the city council, maybe? "High Council" sounds kind of fantastic.

---

Storyline - **. I'm only seeing half the story here, and it's not actually the half I'd prefer to see. I mean, okay, the Circle buy off the Hellions with some magic potion so they'll cause a distraction and leave the Circle free to scry for a more powerful artifact that will let them... and that's where the Circle's story ends.

Despite being the more powerful faction on offer, able to raid MAGI at a whim and lead the Hellions about by the nose, the Circle plot is a bit of a B-side, not even showing up in missions 2 and 4, and not resolved at the end of the arc. It's still kicking around, with the Circle talking about going to a sewer to do... something.

Is there a planned second half to this story that I'm not seeing? I'd be all in favor of just scrapping missions 2 and/or 4 in order to add a little resolution to the Circle plot. Not even necessarily stopping their ultimate plot, but heading down to the sewer to see what's up.

Design - **. The missions feature the extensive use of chained objectives, but for the life of me I can't see why, most times. There's really no logical tie a lot of times. Why does the boss speech in mission 3 trigger the superadine to be collectable? Why does the van suddenly show up in mission 4 halfway through the fight with the corrupt guard? Why do I need to spring a hero in mission 2 before I find the boss, and fight the boss before I find the bombs, even though I know both of those things are kicking around from the start?

Chains, especially on outdoor maps, can be worrying because the random placement can stick something in an area you've already cleaned out. As such they should be used sparingly and of limited length.

Gameplay - ***. The enemies weren't too punishing to fight, but the running back and forth wasn't a lot of fun, and getting blocked off of part of the map by an unfortunately positioned ambush in mission 3, while it wasn't necessarily something you could help, was still frustrating.

(Maybe you could set it in that other burning building, the one with Superadine lying around? It's got a much more open boss arena.)

Detail - **. The text wasn't very readable. You had a habit of putting carriage returns at the end of sentences, making the text as a whole look jagged-edged, which messed with my sense of continuity. And capitalizing words seemingly at random kind of screwed up my sense of where sentences were starting and ending. Starts of sentences and proper nouns are the only things capitalized these days.

Overall - **. Crisscrossing outdoor maps can be a little frustrating even when everything's there from the start. Hunting up seemingly arbitrarily triggered objectives just adds to that. And the story stopped more than it really ended -- the CoT who started the whole thing are still at large and doing whatever they planned on.

Last's night's arc review, tonight!

A rerereview of Matchstick Women (3369). Verdict - **** one more time. Review in MA Forums Thread.

My current queue:

• Reviews of the remainder of the War Against the Undying One series: Striking at the Heart (139463), starting no earlier than April 6.
• Reviews of (randomly chosen) Tis Nobler in the Mind (257226), Drakule vs. The Werewolf Bikers from Hell! (340316), Made to Wave the Flag (384776), starting no earlier than April 5.
• A rereview of The Casualties of War (241496), no earlier than April 12.
• A review of Suppression (374481).
• Reviews of the Labors of Rustam trilogy (54293), (59243), (78130).

And if anybody else wants in, the instructions are in the first post.

@GlaziusF

A full review since apparently there have been significant changes. Running this on my stone/ice tank, +1 x1 with bosses on.

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First mission much the same as it was last time - jump into a burning base, try to put out the flames. What's new here is the martial artist in fire marshal getup, who assumes that I (and not the dozen or so people running around on fire but not discomforted by it) am the one who set the blaze.

Her defeat completes the "find any civilians" mission objective, which kinda seems off given that "civilian" usually has hints of "non-combatant" in it,, but whatever, I'm running into the middle of confusion and I don't blame the navbar.

I get one ambush as I try to break open the fire extinguishers. Did you want exactly one or were you going for one at each valve? You need to create four unique valve names (maybe some numerical junction code or something) if you want the latter.

The return briefing mentions catching a glimpse of one of the firebugs, which (still) sounds like an excellent candidate for a mission exit clue.

---

I sort through the entrance area of this new place (apparently not dyin' in the face of a fireman got me some burn cred) and find burn cream, a journal (fits some kind of "look for stuff" objective but doesn't count as a clue), a map (counts as a clue), and a burn station (doesn't count as a clue). My navbar now says "You thought you saw an odd painting around here, Meet someone", but I've already found the map under the painting.

Single entries to objectives grouped together under a plural just act kinda weird. There's no predicting which one will actually show up, or if it'll relate to what single objective is actually left.

I go up to the top floor, and the boss says "I'm glad you came after our encounter, but now that I see you in person. I don't think you fit here", but I'm sure I'd remember seeing her before.

I'm fairly certain she wasn't the one fighting fires in the base, as I saw that woman's face full on. Or is she using the "our" to refer to her little group?

Anyway, as I pull an ominous note from a bulletin board upstairs and head back down, I have no idea how much of this was actually necessary. It seems like the only important thing aside from the escort, as referenced in the exit clue, is a journal I pulled out of the first room.

---

The guards on the quiet woman don't capitalize "he" in their second sentence. You can use $Heshe to get that effect.

Nobody's down in that little corner by the science store, which is lucky, but by the end of the map, Quiet, Scared, and Peculiar are all following me around.

How many of those were supposed to be? Following me around, that is.

Maybe you should move this to some kind of indoor arena. Like an office complex or warehouse or something. They flush the other workers out except the handful they're interested in.

Also, apparently this coalition's founder thinks it's evil and wants it all to go back to the hell dimension.

Debriefing, why am I wondering about what the cleansing is? That Burnt Match just TOLD me. Am I doubting her veracity?

---

It's nice how you've established the compound in its not on fire form.

The boss is surprisingly not fire armor. What her secondary ability is I don't know, but it's no help against Ice Patch. Damage piles on easily enough and she goes down.

And that's the end of things again.

---

Storyline - ***. The extra mission doesn't really bring much to the table in this regard. The one thing I was the most sure about from the original story was that the customs were members of an initially-beneficial fire cult type of thing that had slowly gone evil as its leader went mad.

Here are some things I'm less sure about: how much time passed between this accident and the establishing of the cult? How was it spent? Coma, psych ward, Legally Distinct From Arkham Asylum? How did it go south? Was it madness pushing the cult to more terrible deeds? Were there cult members (like the Matchbook Collector) pushing for those, and that consequently drove the leader mad? Or were those two factors coincident but unrelated? And where does my contact, the little match girl, come into things? How was she created, and why did she choose me to talk to? Or would anyone have done?

Design - ****. Couple of things about the MA. There's the "unpredictable singular" which I've talked about before - when you're down to one objective out of a plural you don't necessarily get the navbar entry associated with its singular. This isn't how it should work, but it does. Second, inactive captives - like the summoner in the new second mission - don't actually say anything until you aggro their associated spawn. So any vocal indication you may want her to give that you should attack her grays (which may pass as cosmetic details) can't show up until they aggro or somebody actually attacks them. This isn't how it should work, but it does.

The unpredictable singular is never easy to work around. Singulars need to either be made generic, which may not work; take up their own slot in the navbar, which all starts to run together when there are more than about three lines in it; or chain off other objectives, which can lead to backtracking at the best of times. Inactive captives in this particular case can be fixed by giving her a mix of demons of Bat'zul and behemoths so that at any given level there's something which will aggro on the player. Call them "flame spirits" or something. (Or heck, are the fire imps the Legacy Chain occasionally unleashes on you from magical wards available under their group?)

Gameplay - *****. No hiccups here. The lower-level corner of the Steel Canyon map is always a concern, but it didn't come into play. Smoke on the lieutenant controllers is a little irritating, but it passes quickly at least.

Detail - ***. See the storyline entry above about nothing really changing. The new mission doesn't really add anything as far as clues go, aside from some foreshadowing that also shows up in the now-third mission. (The journal from the Burnt Match would be an equally suitable end clue there too.)

Overall - ****. I understand how you're attached to the gimmick of finding a mission in the images of a fire. That's the one thing that hasn't changed about this arc as I've played it. But the big problem with that is that you can't convey nearly as much information in the briefings this way. That's because it puts players through two layers of indirection instead of the usual one; instead of reading the briefing and figuring out what it means (which is often trivial) they have to read the briefing, figure out what sorts of images it's describing, and then figure out what those images mean. It gets a bit "telephone game" at times, and the net effect for me was to make the briefings feel otherworldly and disconnected from the missions, which felt more real since they contained "actual" characters and dialogue.

I could definitely see this gimmick operating in an animated feature, or even in a comic book. But one of the unfortunate differences between the mission architect and a comic book is that a comic book can use pictures. The mission architect can't -- heck, briefings are only 1000 characters, not 1000 words. "Unusual contacts" like TV, Radio, and Slot Machine may borrow their words, but they have some nonetheless. I'm not expecting fifty-foot-high letters of fire here, but I'll say it again -- something more than pantomime from the contact would really help.