GlaziusF

Nothing happening tonight what with scoping out test. Just as well. My queue's starting to get a bit anemic.

Last night's arc that Captain Narcolepsy decided to whack me after I played: Redoubt Operations II: Wrath of the Imperium (269283) . Verdict: ****. Review on MA Forums Thread.

@GlaziusF

Playing this one on a low 40s merc/TA mastermind, diff 3 for actual bosses.

---

Blank checks get me suspicious. Most villains don't live long enough to cash them.

But the plan is sound, or at least explosive.

Huh. Any reason these charges aren't the see-through kind? Generally that's how "plant bomb" missions work.

Man, nothing like hunting around an empty office building with a bunch of nooks and crannies looking for the one clickie you missed.

This is another largely empty first mission - one patrol, one ambush, and a whole bunch of long-duration glowies to click.

---

And now for a little abduction from the overpass. (wish they'd put a longbow heli in more maps, there are plenty with an Arachnos flyer in 'em.)

Patrol, ambush, required objective. Don't get me wrong, putting too many things to do on this Skyway map is asking half of them to get shoved down into the crazy blind alleys under two layers of elevated highway. But it feels a bit Olivia Darque Round 2, really.

---

...one month? Seriously? He's got a robot duplicate that can't be detected by the Freedom Phalanx or these REDOUBT guys despite being publicly accessible to both of them for a month?

I guess if Nemesis can pull it off, sure, but I was expecting a little more urgency here.

That stretch of Nerva does make for a suitable jungle coast.

Huh. Two EBs. Well, fortunately I have my pocket Shivan, and that's enough damage output to break both of 'em down.

In one sense the RNG was kind to me, putting 'em pretty much in open water right from the start. But in the other sense I finished off the map with a tiny little smudge of it actually cleared. I know you can't position things reliably on outdoor maps but that doesn't make it any less of a letdown.

---

Strike team, huh? Okay, time to pick up some more Shivan.

Hmm. This base map looks bugged. All the floors are showing up on the same minimap in tiny tiny corner illustrations.

...um. That was not what I expected when he put "strike team" in big orange warning letters. This was just a bunch of destructibles and one fight the invaders won handily. Not even an ambush or an EB network admin showing up to investigate or anything.

---

$name needs to get commas before and after it when it's being used in the middle of a sentence to address somebody.

Huh. Destroyed lab? Kinda makes sense.

Lots of fights here which leave a shield boss from the raspberry-flavored robots intact. Kind of a pain to clean up after, especially when he pops Build Up.

Gilgamesh gets his hello dialogue co-opted by one of the many battles that are going on. I lure him out into a couple minor battle groups, pop out a Shivan, and chase him all over the top floor as he... tries to establish some kind of range? I don't know. The ambushes that try to defend him are swallowed up by the rear guard of grape-flavored robots that's been winning every non-boss battle so far.

He goes down but the objective doesn't complete until I walk back into his room and take out a medicbot stuffed in a corner.

Surprisingly I was not actually stuffed into the roboticizer by my contact, which seems rather generous of him.

---

Storyline - ***. My real sticking point is the rather arbitrary "one month later" between missions 2 and 3. If the lady who got replicanted is really the only voice of support then all you need to do is have her hold a press conference and say "it's clear in the wake of this tragedy that automated systems by themselves are simply not enough to ensure the safety of anyone", after which she drops all support for REDOUBT, cue pervasive uncertainty and then mission 3 the following morning twists the knife. I'm also a little surprised that a big bad who promised the world actually delivers instead of trying to pull a fast one at the end, especially since we know about his secret plan to discredit REDOUBT in the first place and I doubt they're quite all gone.

Design - ***. I didn't mind it so much with the grape-flavored robot troops, where the annoying powers were either persistent or obvious in use. But gravity is more subtle, and the raspberry-flavored medic bots need a bit of a different color aesthetic to set them off. The MM lieuts couldn't hurt with one either, since there's one long fight against them in a watery area, which will hide the electric ground effect. There's also no real evidence of internecine struggle - I didn't see if the patrols in mission 3 were rogue or not, but there wasn't any obvious infighting in missions 4 or 5. (maybe replace the chasers in mission 4 with it?) Mission 5 is a bit of a letdown after 3 as well, fighting one EB instead of two. I get that things were probably intended to go a bit differently - battles leaving behind either a boss or an MM lieutenant who summons up, Gil being an AV, (I guess, I don't remember purple triangles but I wasn't exactly in his face) but as it was it was more of an annoying fight since he tried to keep range and his ambushes got eaten up by the grape-flavored robots.

Gameplay - ****. Nothing the canon doesn't pull all the time - kidnap run over empty terrain, lots of glowies in a map that likes to tuck them in corners, end boss playing keepaway.

Detail - ****. I can understand the bios on the EBs, but even the rank and file have a giant wall of text, most of which seems to be some generic description of REDOUBT. You should probably find a way to work that into a briefing clue somehow.

Overall - ****. A fairly straightforward "I'm gonna get you, Gilgamesh" arc with a time skip I couldn't see a reason for, a bit of an anticlimactic final mission, and an enemy group that needs to make the controllers stand out a little more.

Tonight's arc: a rereview of Matchstick Women (3369). Verdict - still ****. Details in MA Forums Thread.

@GlaziusF

Rereview! High 40s spine/regen scrapper since last time it was way too easy. Still diff 2 though.

I'll do this like I did the last rereview: comments on things in missions that may or may not have changed.

---

M1: Ah, new contact. Still pretty much the same "dialogue" here, though. I know exactly what it's supposed to represent now, but if it's supposed to mean anything to someone playing this arc for the first time, I still think going with burning snatches of newspaper headline is the way to roll.

M1: The water mains spray for a good long time after they're destroyed. I don't really need the system text, it's a bit redundant. But I like how you restructured the first mission so it doesn't accidentally complete on its own, anymore.

M1: If I'm supposed to have caught a glimpse of one of the Sisters of Flame here, that seems like a good candidate for an exit clue.

M2: Bad news: diff 2 means bosses EVERYWHERE. Good news: that's a really nice smoke effect on their heads given the fire armor.

M2: Considering a solo hero can find bosses everywhere, a little custom description on the important ones would be a big help.

M2: One of the hostages is called "Pecular". "Peculiar", right? If she's supposed to be the same person from mission to mission why not give her the same name?

M2: In contrast to the quiet girl's system text she's following me around and wrecking things.

M3: When I drop the lit matchstick near the front I get system text "No! The cleansing must go on as planned!" Sounds like dialog that got misdirected.

M3: Are both of the glowies supposed to be in the very first room, too?

M3: You know, I never noticed that obnoxious patterned fabric on the burning couch before.

M3: I think the boss defeat clue should come after the two glowie clues, given that she's guaranteed to be at the end. Clues come in the same order as the objectives are positioned, IIRC.

---

Storyline - ***. Not much has changed here, fundamentally. The story's still told largely in pantomime but without the context the pantomime's just a bunch of pretty pictures. I'll reiterate the idea of newspaper clippings/evil journals/childhood crayon drawings burning up in the fire as a means of providing something a bit more substantive.

Design - *****. Call this "6 - 1". One off for stock descriptions of the special bosses on that outdoor map when actual bosses are a real possibility, but the 6 for the smoke effect on the bosses after they "burn out". That was really nice and felt completely natural.

Gameplay - *****. Nothing to complain about here, though do be warned that objectives have a way of falling down that one drop to the science store level in the Royal Overlook map.

Detail - ***. I guess what I'm really expecting here is some sense of why I'm doing the first two missions. Why am I playing firefighter in an abandoned base that's just going to wake up somebody's superpowers anyway? Why am I trying to stop people from being indoctrinated in this cult when ultimately I'm going to cut their supply of napalm Kool-Aid off at the source?

Overall - ****, but a bit higher than it was the last time. Really, I need a sort of definiteness about things that the contact pantomime just isn't giving me right now.

Tonight's arc: Why We Fight (253990). Verdict - ***. Review on MA Forums Thread.

@GlaziusF

Playing on a high-40s Brute, diff 2 for boss fights.

---

Hmm. I guess I shouldn't tell the arbiter about this little remote for a LEO nuke in my pocket then, shouldn't I? God bless you, Marshall Blitz, and all your casual safeguards.

Anyway, pretty standard post-apocalypse here, though I denote a marked lack of bare-chested guys with spiky shoulderpads. (Also aren't some of the Freak and Lost lieutenants or even bosses suitable for this group? It'd make for more variety.)

All the glowies were packed in the couple blocks by the entrance. Deliberate, or RNG random atmosphere destruction? Interesting choice for the "waypoint" mechanic, too.

Found a nice vocal boss at the back, but was expecting like Positron glorying in how he didn't need armor anymore or something suitably over the top.

Also, Nemesis is a freakin' cockroach, man -- and I get some riffback from the contact in the closing moments, too. Hilarious.

---

So did Dr. Aeon fill out this here factory from memory, or...?

Ah well, time to kill the children.

Aw, it's just Longbow? Maybe Sister Psyche has some with her. It's a pity the level range doesn't make it possible, but it'd be hilarious to put in a Succubus and call it her true form or something.

Hmm. Is that a custom version of her? Workable job, but she didn't stay up long enough for me to check if the belt had ampoules on it or not. Nice to have a signature character who's makable in the costume creator, innit?

...so the mission designer had Nemesis on the brain, is that the conclusion I'm supposed to draw here? Plan 48D is apparently "explode violently". Unless they were carrying some sort of viral code or something.

---

Aaaand now the mission designer is pissed that GW turned him down for a date, because she didn't like pock-faced socially-awkward mouth-breathers in life, and the dead do not change.

So the custom boss drops, and then I see the nav bar.

So at first I think, "wait, what about Paolo?"

And then I see the minions.

And then I think "wait, he needs sparkles" aaaaand then the camera swings in closer.

This thing was programmed by the lowest bidder, wasn't it? I'm just surprised there aren't any Twilight Widows hanging out anywhere.

---

I... I don't know what to say.

No, really, I don't know what to say.

Other than "this simulation bears all the hallmarks of a fantastically expensive project that was scrapped at the last second and replaced with a superficially functioning tech demo".

I'm surprised I didn't find a debug console somewhere.

---

Storyline - *. I gotta level with you, man, I have no idea what the hell you were trying to pull here. It starts off with some reasonably self-aggrandizing propaganda and then descends into what I can only describe as madness, falling through some terrible 80's era cartoon villain schlock and a giant pop culture reference before landing awkwardly in the middle of 4chan. How am I supposed to interpret this? A commentary on the radicalizing of political rhetoric to the point where it just becomes a bunch of nonsensical code phrases to anyone outside the party? Can't be that, pop culture and 4chan are well outside the bubble. A bunch of techies having a laugh and Dr. Aeon browbeating the Arbiter into taking it seriously? Or, well, him taking his own "initiative" with some ludicrous beta version of a reality forecaster and selling something he has no idea is a joke? I'd buy that a little more if there were some components he overlooked, like the aforementioned debug console(s) which spat out ((TODO: replace personality core, currently routed to Gloaming novel)) or ((TODO: route forecaster spider to trace arachnews.com, currently 4chan.org)) or something along those lines. Maybe the sim can spit out process IDs or something as entry and exit popups?

Design - ****. The mutants need a little more variety at Lt. level, I only ever saw the customs waltzing around. There's some passable fakery with the Wolf Spiders and probably Sister Psyche too.

Gameplay - *****. And aside from getting jumped by perceptive catgirls, the combat was alright and I didn't have to poke around very much to find everything.

Detail - ***. Webster is selling the party line pretty hard here, which is a shame. There isn't anything lying around for me to get in the mission creator's heads, so as an alternative I'd like to get into his a bit. "Several citizens have responded only with hysterical laughter, their minds no doubt SHATTERED by the horrors they have witnessed." That sort of thing. I mean, what's his angle? Has he actually run this himself beyond peeking into the first mission? Does he only have other peoples' reactions to go on and they're getting all Milgram-style "yes sir that was a terrifying simulator of the dreadful path a living Ghost Widow would walk" on him?

Overall - ***. I think I get the shape of things here: authority figure presenting patent nonsense as teachable truth. Four legs good, two legs better, that kind of thing. But when I flipped through Animal Farm it wasn't too hard to figure out where the patent nonsense came from, even though the viewpoint wasn't privy to its generation. This patent nonsense is too pop-culture to be insular and too... well, not buggy to be a bug. It's a weird thing to say, but it doesn't make enough sense for me to buy it.

Well, first off, I hope you can get yourself into a better mood soon, man. Malaise sucks, and I'm not talking about the purple swirly guy.

Last night's arc that I fell asleep writing a review of: A Twist of Destiny (300379). Verdict - ***. Review on MA Forums Thread.

@GlaziusF

Alright, time to test out this thing's lowbie chops. Running it on a level teens ice/fire dom, diff 1 for authentic lowbie experience.

---

Not even past the first briefing screen and I like this guy already. I hope the last mission involves handing him his metal butt in a sling.

Rather short little map, just a quick patrol to set the scene...

Uh oh. Mr. CO's not gonna like this, Yogi. I think we've just found our motivation.

---

So the second mission is to fight even more Longbow! This certainly is a representative CoV arc.

I kid because I love.

Anyway, looks like it's time to go kidnapping. And my CO isn't going to impale my body on one of his legs to use as a puppet! Today's looking up.

So did you pick this "long straight line" base, or was it randomly generated?

Anyway, pretty silent and empty in here except for the single captive and the single ambush that tries to save her.

You're right, captive. I don't understand what's at stake here. Maybe if you actually TOLD me you might have something to persuade me with.

Yes, yes, I'm aware I have no idea of what I'd just done, would you like to drop some vague allusions instead of just flailing?

So tell me, when you wrote the Crab, were you keeping in mind that these are the guys Mako trains? Because it definitely fits.

---

Hmm. Wait a second. I know that "destined one" is like the VIP badge equivalent, but NPCs call all of us "destined ones" kind of jokingly.

Recluse is breaking into the Zig and pulling people out because of a prophecy that somebody he breaks out of the Zig is going to help him rule the world. That's it. That's all he has to go on.

I wouldn't be surprised that someone out of the hordes Recluse keeps ferrying out to Mercy Island would do something else important. But wouldn't they be, say, working for Vanguard at the time?

Also isn't there a Rikti ambassador in Grandville who wants to keep the war going? I know Arachnos are raging against Vanguard all the time in the war zone. So where does my CO get the idea it'll be okay to end the war?

Also he isn't hardly trying to bite my head off when I bug him anymore. The stress must be getting to him.

Anyway, I'm fighting even more Longbow in even more Longbow Base.

One vocal spawn that's guarding my buddy, one computer to click... halfway through the base? Man, was there some patch screwup that made ALL the glowies Back when they should be Middle and Middle when they're set for Back?

I head for the back room anyway to see if anything's shaking but it's all quiet, again.

I like that my buddy's a kin, really helps with the end regen and suchlike. But two little things. First, you can use $Heshe to get the appropriate pronoun capitalized. Second, Longbow really need to hire a better negotiator. Then again they don't really have much to offer a guy they threw in jail but got busted out by somebody else.

---

Ah, there's my CO's brutality. I guess it's just not for me since I didn't get captured. But... really? Azuria put guards on something so it has to be her journal about the ritual?

The woman runs MAGI. Presumably she has other things to worry about.

Ah well, mine is not to question why, mine is but to make 'em fry.

So there's this safe in the first room. I give it a click and wait around, thinking "nope, this can't be the one".

Boy, am I surprised! But it's not the good kind of surprise.

I'm kind of wondering, though, why Dycedarg (for the life of me I can't even figure out how to pronounce his mouthful of a name) and now Azuria are all so convinced that the Arbiters are going to wreck us. Arbiters are basically the refs of Arachnos. They break up interfaction or intra-Arachnos fighting by any means necessary. Unless Dycedarg has been stealing from other agents to finance this mad scheme...

And why's Azuria giving away her plot now? What is she, some kind of Republic serial villain?

---

I'm not sure Dycedarg should just be trusting his sources here since he got burned just last mission.

Huh. Didn't figure this for an outdoor place.

Okay, you've got patrols saying duplicate things but they're all generally spaced out so I don't get hit with multiple copies at once. Pretty nice. One of 'em tips me off that my inside guy was taken by Wyvern, so of course when I head right to the back to find him practically in Fire's lap he's being gutpunched by... Legacy Chain?

Also he has the default system lieutenant description. (I checked because I had no idea what his power source was. If magic, at least the Legacy had a bone to pick.)

So apparently the Phalanx trust Fire, but not enough to give her the same medical transporter that the scrub heroes who can't stop a bank robbery have.

Actually, I'm not sure what happened to her after she collapsed. I didn't get a system message or a clue or anything.

I'm also not sure we actually got the right villain. I mean, Azuria yanked our chain once, and now Dycedarg doesn't suspect her anymore, so if she put a fake name in that letter (when she doesn't get anything out of dropping the real one) she can act with impunity.

Dycedarg doesn't even consider this, of course. He's just glad to keep his spider-legs outside the armor.

---

Storyline - **. The idea's alright, but the progression of the missions rests on such a shaky foundation. My CO has to be eager enough to fall for Azuria's first feint and gullible enough to believe her a second time -- and of course I have to go along with him. He's under the impression that the Arbiters are going to get to killin' if this operation fails, which I'm sure would be news to anybody who's ever failed to pull off a simple bank job, and thinks he's got some kind of deniability, but who exactly arranged for my transport in the first place? Some scrub out of the Zig can't just go "hey you, Destined One here, get me to Paragon City chop-chop". And he seems to think it's completed successfully when there's no word about the fate of Fire, and Azuria could just as easily have put a fake name in that letter and fed some villain's ego to make for a perfect distraction.

Design - ***. The first and last missions are the only ones where there's anything not directly coupled to a required objective, and the third and fourth ones both end very prematurely due to weirdness in glowie placement.

Gameplay - ***. And in addition to that early ending, mission 2 ends with a long, empty slog back through a linear obstacle course.

Detail - ***. The story's weak mostly because of what it tries to lean on, and it comes out alright in the details. But getting nothing about the fate of Fire is a pretty major oversight, and it's generally very skimpy with the clues.

Overall - ***. The links between missions need some improvement, and the missions themselves could do with a spate of debugging and a little more life in 'em.

@GlaziusF

Alright, let's see how soloable this is. Level 37 ice/sound controller, running on diff 3 for the real boss fights.

---

Oh boy, it's Evil Corp Crey!

A method of rapidly producing superhumans? You mean besides the Paragon Protectors they have running? Okay, maybe this is "before" we know about the clone lab and Invisible Falcon and all.

So the security chief had one too many HR seminars about the dangers of passive aggression and now mistakes it for the real thing? Is that what I'm seeing here?

Ah, I kid because I love.

Some nice distracto glowies in here and the real prize is pretty nice too.

So this IS before the Paragon Protectors were outed. Okay.

---

Ooh. It's nice to get the city on my side.

But this is screaming for a timed mission here.

...sweet Christmas that's a giant navbar crammed full of a lot of text. You know how to condense disparate objectives into a single plural - you did it in the first mission. Really it needs to be done here too.

Huh. Interesting. He thinks we're working with one of Crey's rogue projects.

They found ancient buried cryopods and started researching. Well within the scope of Crey.

Ohhhh, this is gonna be some cheese. I'm getting Fallout vibes, just in the retroculture.

Would you like some irony? This character's a Nuclear 90 organic snocone machine. Her name is "Snowcone IX", which means what you think it does.

---

Ahaha, oh dang. WHEN RETRO FOODIES KILL.

Okay, let's see where this goes.

...Royal Overlook. I dislike this map. There's just so much territory to cover and so many weird alcoves to hide things. 8 of 'em is pushing it.

Feel free to get all Don Martin with the sound effects. It's kind of weird to see sensible words coming from an inanimate object.

Aaaand 40 minutes later the last machine goes down. That was just an energy sapping mission. So much running. So much rezzing Freakshow.

---

Time to bust a bunker, then.

Ah, the ol' atom bomb countdown. I feel like one a' them double-naught spies.

The prole sword is pretty hilarious.

But I have to ask, is there any reason the last two missions are locked to higher levels? If you have guest captives they don't have to dictate the level of the mission.

The first two bosses are pretty interesting mixes to contain and drop, but the final room is so small that the end EB aggros onto me as soon as the collection's complete.

Ice control/Ice armor. That's a mix that'll slow you down to a ridiculous degree if you get close into it and can't step away because you're moving too slow.

Shivan charge, away! And I'm still almost wiped when my pets turn on me due to Arctic Air going off, but we all survive... somehow. Really given how much slow you're pitching at people with ice control's targeted powers you may want to ignore Arctic Air and consider a more "pure defense" armor set like energy armor. Nothing like staring at multiple bars full of tiny, tiny icons.

...um. Wow. Thanks for beating most of the salient plot points with a misshapen hammer, final debriefing. I know what I just did! I WAS THERE! You don't have to be all "oh my who expected the Red Menace wasn't the cold war tragic", I heard 'em rant while they got whittled down! And Russia was kind enough to provide intel on these yahoos so they're probably over the Cold War, just a little!

I mean, okay, maybe it's a weird parodically-intended cheeseball moralization, but the tone is just off-putting.

---

Storyline - ****. I really hate to do this, but that final debrief was a record scratch at the end of a smooth, smooth mixtape. Peeling back the paint and calling out the events in the arc for being nonsensical and unexpected, even if they WERE nonsensical and unexpected, disperses the comfortable fog of retro camp, revealing a jagged abyss of broken contrivances.

Design - ****. Needs an end map where the final boss isn't going to spawn standing on your shoulders, and a final boss who's a little less inclined to make you stare at your power bar for half a minute while things start recharging. The customs are nice, even if the two baseline robot minions are a bit superficially similar. And there's a nice variety of objectives, though they often crowded out the navbar. The glowies in mission 2 can all stand to be condensed and the nav text in mission 3 could stand to be a bit less verbose.

Gameplay - ***. That end boss and the interminable hunt for converted soft-serve machines are the major drags here.

Detail - *****. The detail was pretty much top-notch all the way round, though.

Overall - ****. A less introspective debriefing and a less sprawling outdoor map would both be big helps here, and the final boss's powers and spawn mechanism would benefit from some tweaks as well. But overall this is a good piece of campy superhero action.

Tonight's arc: The Coldest Of Wars (299972). Verdict - ****. Review below in this thread.

I leave long feedback for everything I play, even if some of it gets a bit stream-of-consciousness at times.

But then, I only play arcs where there's somewhere I can leave long feedback.

I enjoy it whenever someone does the same.

But then, I think everyone wants to read what I write, so there you go.

"coming from" is the key there. The person who gets the money owes PayPal a cut, similar to credit card processing fees, or buying vs. selling at the consignment houses. The buyer doesn't pay extra, the seller just gets less.

Paragon Studios, unless they've been gaming the system, is already a business user of PayPal and would have been paying these fees already. From their perspective, probably nothing changed.

@GlaziusF

So here's a rereview, since the original edition of the mission was a mistakenly uploaded beta version with many, many things wrong with it.

Running with the same character on the same difficulty, calling out notable changes with big comments in one block at the end.

---

M1 briefing: "You tried to reists but my will was stronger" -- this is troubling for two reasons. First, it's spelled "resist". Second... yay arc where I'm a mindless meat puppet. Ah well, blades swing the same whatever happens.

M1 contact-bothering text: "Your rewards will be great, I guarentee it!". "Guarantee".

M1: I still don't know what the person I'm supposed to run off with looks like.

M1: Also still bugs me that Longbow are calling Helen Drake "the woman". They know her husband's name.

M1: Heh. Yeah, this time the outdoor map picked the kidnap point that's less than 100 yards from the truck. Not even any enemies in the way.

M2: Ah, midnighters. Nothing like losing a handful of powers in the middle of an arc to make a body feel loved. At least it's pretty much the shortest possible map.

M2: Ha! One of the midnighter idling animations is drinking tea. That's just wonderful.

M2: So... what was in the other chests? Were they empty? Did they have fenceable artifacts? Do I not care because I'm a demon meat puppet?

M3: The arc description doesn't say defeat all, so I'm hopeful. Oh! It's just an oranbega crawl. ...but doesn't this put the last three missions inside Oranbega? I'll see, I'll see.

M3: One of the notable features of Oranbega is that it loves cramming assist spawns around blind corners.

M3: The fight with Escalus is interesting because the room is basically a blind run in with plenty of support, the ambush adds a nice wrinkle because Logbow's got good support at this level. But exit clue? It'd be more satisfying if I wasn't the meat puppet of a demon king.

M3: I'd like to see some poor doomed Circle talking about how they sealed off the relevant portion of the cave.

M4 briefing: It's spelled "impregnation". Honestly I would rather never have corrected anyone's spelling of that word.

M4: Once again, the NPC who supposedly wants to talk to me just bolts for the door.

M4: Uh, exit clue? I'm being dominated here. My will is not my own. You'd think she'd want to do something about that.

M5 accept clue: Could you just put the enchantress in the mission and have her pass on the buff?

M5: Vienna spawns down a little side-passage near the beginning. You can't see the particle effects until you step into the room and it's a very missable turn. (also Vienna's rescue clue has no title)

M5: . . . and the Dark Hellgod is right down the hallway from her? What?

M5: And as soon as he went down, Liberty Belt Ms. Liberty spawned in right on top of me. Whacked my health down with undodgeable giant damage. DIdn't really get a chance to do much because my system was choking on a) all the patrols spawning in and b) like 5 copies of identical dialogue.

M5: . . . IT'S A JAIL MAP?!

M5: And she's blocking the path to the books, too, since I've been everywhere else. Time to combine everything into lucks and burn a Shivan.

M5: ...she runs. Thank the lord she's not a required objective. But I don't even get an insp out of the whole mess? Good luck slowing her down, I mean.

M5: ...and because of all the portals, Vienna gets caught up trying to go through one and her AI just runs her back and forth forever.

M5: . . . why are Longbow the ones guarding the books? Because they think it's actually the girdle of Aphrodite? (it's got a default description on it) I mean, wouldn't the same enchantress who briefed Escalus bother telling the HEROES what was up with this whole affair?

---

Storyline: *. So what's worse than a story that paints you as a dominated demon puppet? A story that forgets you're a dominated demon puppet halfway through. (What am I supposed to think? My will's no match for his, I'm going all "yes master of course master" and he's praising me like a dog that did a particularly difficult trick, possibly involving ramps.) This is yet another arc that ends on a destructible object going poof. It doesn't even summon in any ambushes or anything. After what was supposed to be a tough boss fight, winding it down that way just feels like a letdown.

Design - **. Yeah, uh... when the climactic boss fight leaves me a little bit dinged up and then the nuisance hero pastes me in three shots? Guess who doesn't seem like that much of a threat. Also this is coming down for stuff that's probably just normal RNG variation, which may seem unfair, but part of your job is to make sure you're using maps and allocating objectives such that the RNG doesn't park the captive 100 yards from the door in a straight line over open terrain, or put the trigger for a whole mission down a missable side passage, or put two chained boss fights in close enough proximity that the player's getting mauled by the second boss right after the first one drops.

Gameplay - ***. It was all going so well up until that last map, too. But unavoidable boss death followed by the sudden realization I'm in a damn JAIL MAP often offends.

Detail - ***. Generally solid spoiler-free work here, though there are some places I noted down where I'd like a little more detail or at least not a default description.

Overall - **. It's definitely an improvement on the first draft, but the changes broke almost as much as they fixed.

Tonight is a re-review of Vienna Rising (286563). Verdict - **. Review lower in this thread.