GlaziusF

@GlaziusF

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

---

Hey, Babs. You could use a contact description. Maybe something about how you’re getting too old for this? Anyhow.

Well, somebody eventually decided to combine Superadine with Excelsior, and apparently it works in a non-heart-exploding fashion.

Whoah. Did they update the dilapidated warehouse textures when I wasn’t looking? Guess so.

Marauder’s goons are in here, talking up a storm. You might want to cut down on the number of destructibles and patrols in this small space - the dialogue was getting all jammed together, and I think a patrol managed to get itself right up in the rafters, because there was something up there that I had to knock down to clear the mission.

Anyway, looks like the Destroyers are the pushers for this crap.

---

Now that we can get clues to open the mission, it’d probably be a good idea for Babs to hand off one of those. Anyway, headin’ off to break a drug deal over my large chitin-plated knee.

A cargo ship.

...a defeat all cargo ship? Oy.

Well, at least it’s just Destroyers and Freakshow. And battles between them which assume I’m somewhere in line of sight when they start, which again, I’ve pretty much given up on actually happening.

Judging by the bosses who’ve tipped some CyberDyne down their gullet, this stuff is bad for you when the adrenaline kicks in.

The Destroyers talk about a mysterious “Doc” who’s actually synthesizing this stuff. Is it time to go blow up some drug labs? I hope I hope I hope.

---

Yaaaaaaay it’s time to wreck the machinery of the latest drug cartel!

The CoT’s possessed scientists could use some new descriptions, though of course this was written before that was possible.

The synthesizers look like ordinary metal crates. I do know there is some lab equipment among the destructibles that would probably work better.

Oh, this is stuff to make cybernetics work... better? But the Freak who took it was going insane just as much as the “ordinary” Destroyer. I guess it also awakened some latent genetic potential or whatever the side effects are supposed to be.

---

And now that one of the rats leaving that sinking ship has gone back to his nest, it’s time to take out the mastermind of this little operation.

...with an assist from Manticore! Well, that’s unexpected.

The Doc seems to have overestimated the effectiveness of his own formula, sticking around in the vain hope it’ll eventually kick in and he can repel us.

(Well, maybe it does. It’s hard to tell with his armor set, but does he have Build Up, or did two lucky blows just manage to get through my armor at the same time?)

---

...and it looks like Babs is going to try the stuff for himself. He’s been coming off as overwhelmed during this arc, but this really feels a bit off. I mean, the whole going against his crusade thing aside? This stuff hasn’t actually worked as advertised for anybody! They’ve all been just “oh wait till the Dyne kicks in then I’ll beat you down you agh argh bluh”.

Huh. The Cyberdyne gang is in here with him. Figured this for more of a one-man showdown. But alright. Pop a Shivan, because Babs never goes down easy. Around three-quarters health he comes off his high and the ‘dyne starts taking control of him. Mercy comes swiftly afterward.

---

Storyline - ***. Even if Babs is griping about having Wyvern steal a march on him, it really seems from Manticore’s warnings that he’s going to be trying the Cyberdyne for really no reason.

Well, why not give him one?

Superadine and Excelsior are both modified super-soldier fomulae as it is. What if this whole thing started off as a side project by Babs to get himself more integrated with his power gloves, and then one of the researchers sampled his own manufacture and got all hopped up on evil? It’d explain why he was trying to overtake Wyvern’s investigation, and why he dips into the supply at the end despite all evidence pointing to it being ineffective at best, crippling at worst.

At least then Babs has a bit of a reason to go against everything he ever fought for, as opposed to a general malaise. The story was going pretty well up until that point, and you did a decent job foreshadowing that all was not right with our favorite Galaxy City-standin’ bad boy. I just find it difficult to buy that last sharp turn.

Design - ***. This is an arc that modern MA design innovations can help. The ability to rename stock enemy groups and write custom descriptions would let you write a good story for the various possessed scientists, and clarify if the Destroyers have come over from Praetoria or just reflect the muscle of the gang. Mission-entrance clues would let Babs actually pass along the evidence he says he’s handing us to go bust CyberDyne. I’m not sure if the odd destructibles in mission 3 were a product of “mission rot” as the MA changed or just the best available to you at the time, but you can use Supes labs now and they don’t buff you or dangerously explode.

Gameplay - ****. Something you may not have been aware of: patrols count for the purposes of defeat all in mission/in final room (if they’re set to spawn in the final room). Why this is I don’t know, as they fall victim to the same pitfalls as ambushes/defend ambushes: pathing can get enemies stuck in weird places. The only place this really hurt me was in the initial mission, getting a few enemies stuck in the rafters and having to find the tiny angle they were actually open to attack from.

Other than that, a generally solid outing against generally stock mobs.

Detail - ***. This is another “drifting modern expectations” gripe, but because all the mobs are stock with stock descriptions (as are the destructibles) I never really get a feel for who this Cyberdyne Gang is or how they operate. Seeing as how they’re the “new group” and prime driver of the plot, this is a little problematic.

Overall - ***. Can I say “drifting modern expectations” again? The Architect is more capable than it was when this arc was written, so I expect that arcs will take advantage of these capabilities to present alternate enemy group backstories and provide me with the clues my contact could credibly hand off to start a mission, among other things. There’d probably be another star on this rating if the arc was kept current, but in addition to these upgrades there’s still the issue of putting a little more reason behind Babs’ appearance in the last mission.

Tonight's random arc: Dyne of the Times (6600). Verdict - ***. Review lower in this thread.

Random arcs I flipped through trying to find one I hadn't played before:

The Four Treasures of the Tuatha de Danaan (164100). Verdict - ***.
Astoria in D Minor (41565). Reviewed previously but not on-site, verdict - *****.
Spanks for the Memories (21144). Verdict - **.
Premium Quality Mission (148476). Verdict - ****.
How to Survive a Robot Uprising (12669). Verdict - ***.

My current queue:

• Randoms!

If anybody wants in, the instructions are in the first post. 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 doesn't even have to be as long as the critical monstrosities I find myself putting out now and again.

@GlaziusF

Running this on my low-40s merc/TA mastermind, +0/x2 with bosses on and normal architect rewards also on.

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Interesting. Contact actually has a description! Nice to see a Dev Choice that’s still updated to keep with the modern limits.

Though whatever Wretch gives you to start the mission would make a nice leadoff clue, assuming you’ve a mind to.

So the “Nihilists” are the weird group who invaded the base. They are what it says on the tin, committed to the destruction of all life with the manic intensity of the Freakshow.

The traditional doom intersections are alive and well, but aside from that there’s some decent variety in showing off this enemy group - my only gripe is that the minions don’t try to close to melee, which is a bit of a pain for melee fighters who all expect it to some extent.

Two glowies show up in the last room -- are you sure this is where you wanted to put them? Anyway, one clicky stops the base from blowing up, one reveals that these yahoos wanted Seer Marino.

Or perhaps our local Hulk or Hulk equivalent. People were all the time trying to force the Hulk into all sorts of weirdness.

---

Anyway, off to the CoT for a withdrawal from their library.

Up front is who I think might be a succubus but is actually I believe a fire/mental blaster. Nice custom. Some fights take place deeper in, and at this point it’s safer to assume that they’ll never work “properly” -- that is, the dialogue that’s supposed to take place on initial aggro just play when they fight each other.

For some reason the custom chains into another boss fight? Ah, with the nihilist in her death clue. Not sure why that should chain, though. I can appreciate not being initially aware, but in these cases where there isn’t a necessary causal relationship I find it a good idea to have the player be initially aware of something. Like, an entrance popup that judging from the bullet casings in the entrance the CoT seem to be preoccupied, with “find the other intruder” in the navbar. Something like that.

Finding books in this three-story end room is kind of weird, though, especially since the room in the center of the spire is a valid glowie location.

The two books detailing the ritual are pretty far apart in the clue list. Since you can rearrange mission objectives now, and therefore the order clues show up in... well, probably there’s no changing this, but just in general, it’s worthwhile so people don’t have to scroll back and forth trying to piece something together.

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Man, they’re trying to wire blood sacrifice into a particle inverter? No wonder they’re all so loopy, when I think how involved a transformer you’d need for that...

Anyway! Gonna stomp on Crey for a little. That’ll be a treat.

Look, I know lolcats are consuming the Internet, but just spouting off memes is the opposite of nothing.

...bother. I pick a lucky branch of the tech lab and find the single glowie that completes the map first thing. Maybe you could consider a more linear tech map? This branched structure is great for searching out multiple objectives but can just make for frustration with a single thing to look for.

It really strikes me that these guys don’t really have a philosophy very far removed from the Freakshow. It’s just destruction on a larger scale.

---

Wretch is... pranking Mako and Black Scorpion. Oh lord. I wonder if I’ll be able to move in this cave for tarantulas and crabs.

Wow. Lots of fights breaking out everywhere. Entire rooms just turn into little balls of everyone shooting at everyone else.

I’m not sure why I have to take down the CoT custom boss from the second mission. She doesn’t seem to be essential to fooling the Nihilists into leading us right to them.

But I suppose the CoT do know what these cosmic fools are planning.

---

Ah. Now I get Wretch and everything goes flying.

Hoo boy. The university rescue map. This one’s always a pain to find things on because of all the overhangs.

Someone who knows the MA a little better than me: can you lead an ally to another ally and get “you led me here” dialogue from the first ally but still have it follow you and fight? It seems like that sort of thing would be good for modeling reunions.

Ah. I thought so. The name of the clue when you find the thing in the Crey lab was too long and scrolled past the end of the clue window. As a destructible here it’s just got very very tiny font.

End boss! ...well, with the Wretch in tow there’s really nothing to any end boss. He whimpers about how rude it is to stop the end of all existence.

---

Storyline - ****. Pretty much the only problem I have with how things are going down here is: why Pia? Do they need someone who’s suffered to usher in the end of the universe? I could kind of buy that, except then they’re tangling with Arachnos and plenty of other people in the world are suffering.

..wait, given these yahoos Arachnos wouldn’t really be an obstacle either, would it?

I was kind of expecting something after the pattern of the classic Hulk where they were doing this all to draw in the Wretch for his special significance, but again there’s not much in evidence to support that.

I don’t really NEED a reason why they’ve involved Pia, necessarily, but it would be nice to have.

Design - ****. The problem with the Nihilists is that they’re as near to all black as they can get. This is offset somewhat by the decent variety in armament and behavior that gives them weapons and particle effects with generally distinctive colors. From a decisions-in-combat standpoint this works very well, but approaching a bunch of Nihilists at rest it’s generally a guessfest as to who has what power and is what rank.

The concern I have with the Nihilists is that this is basically what a splinter Freakshow faction that dabbled in the arcane (as Freakshow sometimes do) would pull off. Like, right down to the dialogue. That’s kinda the problem with making “the X equivalent of the Freakshow” -- the Freakshow are such anarchists that they’ll try anything.

I have a couple of concerns with objective placement, nothing too major. I don’t know if there are Arachnos bases with big end rooms, but putting mulltiple objectives at the end as happens in the first mission results in a very crowded-feeling room. The end room of the Circle map you’ve chosen can park glowies in weird places, including a room halfway up the central spire which I don’t believe is actually accessible by walking. The Crey lab is better support for a more comprehensive search but can be short-circuited in the case of a single objective.

The use of in-mission battles is a pretty good way to present the Nihilists as an active force. The only concern I have with them is that I seem to recall some of the dialogue assuming the battle would kick off with a hero in close proximity, or at least visual range, and by this point I’ve given up on that ever actually happening.

Gameplay - ****. The Nihilists, especially at the boss rank, are hard but fair, though guaranteeing the Wretch takes some sting out of the last fight. My only real problem is that of all the things happening on the last map, only the boss had any kind of particle effects to make him stand out. Dashing around pounding tilde to look for allies in a mostly empty map is a bit of a chore, but the provided allies make it a little easier to scrub the place clean, at least.

Detail - ***. This is where things kinda fall down. Wretch’s unique idiosyncracies often make it difficult to understand what he’s actually talking about. Generally this isn’t an issue for very long, as conditions on the ground become apparent, but when Wretch is taking about what he’s doing in spider central it’s a little more hazy.

Is the “smarty guy” he’s collaborating with a poor beleaguered Bane Spider who made the mistake of helping him once, or just poor beleaguered Dr. Aeon? I mean, when you’re Wretch, everybody else is kind of a smarty guy. It’s kind of hilarious either way, but getting the occasional note (“Smarty guy say give you this!”) would both make it clearer what was going on on the Arachnos end and change up the humor a bit.

Overall - ****. This is a great example of the good things that came out of the early days of MA. I can’t review it as I would have been then, though, only as I am now, more than a year and a half later. It’s a solid arc, and would still be a good intro to what you can do in MA for somebody who’s never seen it before, but after twenty months I can see some room for improvement.

Tonight's random arc: The Wretch's Gift (1008). Verdict - ****. Review lower in this thread.

My current queue:

• Randoms!

If anybody wants in, the instructions are in the first post. 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 doesn't even have to be as long as the critical monstrosities I find myself putting out now and again.

Tonight's arc: TotTSM: EE (360243). Verdict - *. Review in MA Forums thread.

Already played arcs I went through finding another one to play:
The Amulet of J'Gara (1709), verdict: *****.
Tainted Waters (69315), verdict: *
Chapter and Verse (26065), verdict: **.

My current queue:

• Randoms!

If anybody wants in, the instructions are in the first post. 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 doesn't even have 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 an armed man of my own, a low-40s merc/TA mastermind, +0/x2 with bosses on.

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Going 2001, are we? Ah, no, this little one is computer-synthesized.

The accept text kinda runs off the end of the mission screen. You might want to make it a bit less verbose. I find that accept texts work best as objective statements of the mission goals.

The mission brief all tends to run together between my internal monologue and what’s being asked of me. Multiple line breaks and shorter paragraphs would help.

Hmm. None of these enemies seem to have any descriptions, aside from the recolors, which have their original descriptions.

Many of them also seem to be missing spaces in their names,

For some reason the general starts following me around. This makes the enemy plant control NPCs a real riot to fight, as their creeper patch seems to spawn one creeper per target in it. I’m also seeing rain of arrows from minions here, or at least think that I do.

Coupled with the illusion control bosses there’s a good chance that most of the fighting takes place for no XP after the real threats are down.

For some reason I destroy a Terran beacon that the blue-skinned catlike aliens are standing around.

---

And now we kill everybody, take our troops back, and virus-bomb them all. Just another glorious victory.

Between finding the bombs, waiting for the general to resummon the robots he’s already got, and trying to track down the many chained boss fights, this mission has a whole lot of running around and waiting.

Apparently these energy creatures created us, and the blue-skinned catlike aliens are forms that decided floating around the cosmos knowing everything was boring and went back to being fleshy.

I’ve just been a soulless cog in a corporate machine this entire time aaaand my entire species is now getting wiped out. That’ll be fun.

---

Well, maybe if I turn traitor I’ll feel happy when we’re all sucked into the cosmos.

Oh, bah. First room is one of those lab affairs where you run up a ramp right at the start and get three groups at once. That doesn’t go easily.

...moreso because some of these minions are resistant to any sort of crowd control. Wow.

Did I say some? I hit a spawn with my EM arrow and nobody was held.

Some of these soldiers also have Energy Drain, which is an undodgeable half the blue bar taken away.

I pick up some kind of chief alien in the entry, though, who’s a help.

And some more converted PPD, who seem to have taken a roll in the technicolor.

Anyway, the general drops, who I think is the end boss (an HVAS) drops, and then in the same tiny room it’s... my contact as an energy-spewing robot?

And an energy being, just for fun, even though I never really jump down to tag it before the fight’s over.

And as a result... oh, forget this. I’ll see you in the breakdown.

---

Storyline - *. So I’m some kind of independent salvage contractor, or maybe a frozen cloned space marine, or perhaps a soldier in a future PMC, talking to my daughter, who is actually an AI playing off my implanted memory, who may have been compromised by a lab technician or perhaps by the energy aliens who created all life.

You may notice I’m a bit unclear on exactly what I am and what I’m doing in space in the first place. I wasn’t exactly clear on a lot of what was going on in this arc. Having everything run together in the briefings makes it harder to pick any information out of them, and I don’t think until I return from the final mission that anything in the briefings is actually supposed to be true.

The “enemy” bosses tend to provide a lot of the necessary exposition, to the point that I suspect that some of the chained boss fights are only there because all the exposition won’t fit into one fight. But none of them really touch on the little matter of who I really am, or why in the end the aliens pull the hammer of destruction away.

The story needs more time to develop. It feels like you’re trying to address each of the points in every briefing and as a result not really saying much about any of them. Maybe lead off with a normal salvage mission against those nasty alien fauna that showed up in the outdoor mission, to establish the protagonist’s identity a little better, and right before the end put a mission that’s more of a psychological breakout of all the drugs and conditioning the space marines have subjected you to, so you can muster up the will to turn traitor and in the process learn more about yourself and whatever force it is that wants to help you do so.

Design - *. You’ve done a very nice job with the aliens, creating a very primitive appearance through the use of tribal shields, primitive weapon powers, and a credible attempt at clothing made out of leather straps.

I could instantly tell they were supposed to be the Na’vi.

And... that’s kind of a problem.

Sometimes, when you make obvious visual clones, there’s a good reason. I’ve seen them very well used for parodical purposes, or to create expectations which the mission then subverts. But neither of those purposes are in evidence here. Their role in the plot is roughly the same - native species on a planet the space marines want to mine a rare ore from. There is an additional wrinkle in terms of the energy beings but that’s not much of a subversion of the source.

I can tell you put some time into the design, but that doesn’t make it any less a copy.

Gameplay - *. Minions with full auto and rain of arrows. (Rain’s a lot of fun when it’s an ambush just of those minions and that’s what they all decide to drop on you.) Minions immune to crowd control. Lieutenants with aim, power boost, and controller pets. Trying to target the actual threats through two dozen carrion creepers. Running all over an outdoor map trying to figure out where the latest new boss spawned. And the last mission, starting out with three simultaneous groups of minions who couldn’t be crowd-controlled because of their defensive sets, and ending...

Well, have you ever been on a team where you wonder if you’re actually doing anything? Where nothing you do seems to affect the outcome of anything the team does, and all sorts of things are happening just kind of on the periphery? It isn’t that the team doesn’t succeed, but that you don’t feel involved in that success. Well, there were so many allies by the end of mission 3 that it felt that way.

Aside from the very beginning of mission 3 there wasn’t that much utter defeat-based frustration, but there was quite a lot of frustrating gameplay - fighting pets for no reward, tracking over empty space to try and find chained bosses, chafing as my allies in mission 3 ran off to kill and then crashing back down as I realized they were doing just fine against the enemies who wrecked me.

Detail - *. None of the enemies except for a few bosses had any descriptions on them, and as I mentioned up in storyline the briefings and boss fight speeches seemed to be made of rather messily compressed misinformation and information, respectively. Paying attention to any given briefing or boss ranting didn’t actually do much to help my understanding of what was going on - I just followed the instructions in the navbar and hoped for the best.

As an aside, one way to establish a plot/world, outside of pouring everything into the briefings, is through enemy descriptions.

Overall - *. Plagiarized designs, a labyrinthine story, and frustrating missions all combine to torpedo this one.

Tonight's arc: Kali's Scythe (445456). Verdict - ****. Review in MA Forums thread.

My current queue:

• A review of TotTSM: EE (360243).

If anybody else wants in, the instructions are in the first post. 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 doesn't even have 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

Playing this one on my low-20s Peacebringer, +0/x1 with bosses on.

---

Alright, so I’m going to go scout after the apocalypse. This one’s presented much more seriously so I’ll play this review more seriously and keep the Fallout jokes to a minimum.

The Lost seem to be... lighting signal fires for something?

Ah, the surviving leaders spell it out. They’ve adapted this into their doomsday cult and think that by burning things they’ll become like the great force that seared the world.

Borea’s working theory is that this is a Rikti superweapon. Well, it’s as good a guess as any.

Oh, and I’m a brevet Vanguard agent. If it’s going to be important is anyone’s guess.

---

Well, time to check up on the Midnighters.

Okay, they left all their stuff behind and poofed off to Cimerora, including a secret cache of what they could scry about this disaster that came without warning.

Giant cosmic wasp’s nest. Hmm. Seems like somebody was trying to do something to Paragon City and it got a leetle out of control.

---

I may possibly have seen Shivans before. It’s not like nobody ever goes to Bloody Bahahahaha yeah nobody ever goes there.

Anyway, going in to extract a bro.

Some scientist retreated to a sample fallout shelter and he’s jury-rigging the museum machinery to investigate what’s going on. This should be interesting to follow.

Mixed in with the shivans are more human-limited blobs with melee powers. Apparently they’re evidence of whatever force originally did this. They came here to wreck the place and they don’t seem disinclined to disobey orders.

---

Alright. Now to bomb the meteor and destroy whatever’s commanding the Shivans and Shivan accessories.

Hm.

The structure of planting bombs and running back to the entrance to detonate them is thematically sound, but having to lead my ally there and back and there again seems a bit off. If I might suggest starting with a short sewer mission solo just to plant the bombs, and another sewer mission with ally of the wall-caved in variety to follow it?

Oh, the Kali types are warring with the Lost, not patrolling with them. Well, that makes succeeding things easier.

The description of the EB Destroyer says it emits a bright pulse of energy but instead of doing the explodo-cast it’s cheering alongside its minions.

Anyway, with a boss blaster backing me up and Dwarf Form insulating me he goes down pretty easy, amid dire pronouncements.

Things seem clear for now, though. Time to start rebuilding.

---

Storyline - ****. Only thing I’m really wondering here is... if this guy was just all the time bombarding the Earth from space with meteors, why did he stop, and come down to Earth where he was relatively more vulnerable? He ran out of explody sun juice and had to come down to pick up more?

Sorry if it was there and I never picked it up. Aside from that it’s a pretty good run through trying to re-establish a safe haven and communication with the world.

Design - *****. The new melee mobs who join the Shivans add a bit of variety and look very nice, even if they’re a bit dangerous given how much the Shivans debuff defenses.

Missions take place in pretty reasonable settings and are a lot of fun generally.

Gameplay - ****. Tracking an ally around to hit the bombs and then back to set the detonator was a bit of a chore. I still think you could get a good effect with a small sewer map that chained into one of those sewer maps with the wall torn down.

Detail - ****. Detail is pretty good for what’s happened to many major groups in the wake of the cataclysm, but the one place it falls down a bit is on what’s caused it. Not so much what it is as why it’s bothered coming down to where we can punch it.

Not that I mind the chance necessarily.

Overall - ****. A solid arc. Not much wrong with it, maybe a few things I’d change, but well worth playing. I think the only problem with it is that I’d played the villain arc first and was expecting some kind of, like, astral projection up to space as the villain arc was rather securely grounded on Earth.

@GlaziusF

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

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Ah, a meta-Architect scenario? These can be fun.

A mysterious old man (no contact description) wants me to test his program. This should be simple...

Looks like an ordinary 5th column stomp in the Requiem base -- is that the first map in the special maps list? I’m curious.

Ordinary up until some weird sonic necromancer void cultist who shows up in the boss room.

---

...and immediately I’m fighting the cult that man was supposed to be a member of and sucking the soul out of one of its major operatives? Wow.

That’s kind of a jump from what might be a program glitch.

Anyway, I go to fight the cult... and wow, there’s a lot of variety. I think I’m seeing pretty much every conventional (non-elemental) melee set on display. And a little necro and some guys with guns.

The man in charge looks to be dark melee/dark blast, and too much in thrall to oblivion to feel anything.

---

And now I’m destroying them?

Something seems fishy here. I mean, if it was this easy to off these guys you’d think someone would have done it before.

Well, I’ll see how it all shakes out.

Judging by the altar showing up halfway through the mission, I suspect there’s something more going on here... and the clue does not disappoint. The only mystery is what this demon’s powers are.

Looks like... sonic blast. Nothing major.

Should probably be “decrepit shell” there in the debrief.

---

Storyline- **. I’d make a “curse your sudden but inevitable betrayal” joke, but... it wouldn’t really be a joke. The arc flips straight from an innocuous testing mission to murdering a dude to stuff his soul in a crystal, so the betrayal is both sudden and inevitable. It’s really the sudden tone shift from innocuous to murderous that tips my contact’s hand.

And why am I getting involved again? I’m killing a guy who’s tired of life anyway and who probably wouldn’t mind giving up his nihilized body to bring the cult’s dark patron into the world.

Design - **. There’s an attempt to establish an immediate breadth of activity with this death cult that’s supposedly been working in the world for a while now. I can’t really work out what makes them so different from the Banished Pantheon, the current established group of cultists for the gods outside reality.

By “breadth of activity” I’m talking about the varied descriptions on the various custom mobs, which seem to be setting up an internal structure. The problem is that it comes at us all at once, and the vast amount of variety on display makes it tough to actually pick out anybody’s individual story. Except for the case of the larvae and the pistolero there’s really nothing to tie an individual’s story to their powers. The meleers may just as well have all the same generic thug description (varying based on rank) -- it’d actually make them a little more sensible.

Gameplay - ****. The customs are generally not hard to fight, and the clustering in melee is appreciated. The first mission is a little long for something whose only gimmick is “there’s something off at the end”, though, and comes across feeling bland.

Detail - ***. The detail reasonably sets up the simple story; the only real problem I have with it is in the description of the customs, where there are a lot of supposed distinctions being drawn that don’t really matter in the short term.

Overall - **. So there are three kinds of games you can roughly call “horror”: shock, suspense, and Castlevania. Shock is a suddenness of lights and sounds to spark an adrenaline rush -- suddenly, a zombie jumps through a plate glass window! Suspense builds a feeling of dread through environments that take familiar elements and use them in odd and unsettling ways -- it only takes one zombie inside a department store mannequin before you’re suspicious of every one you pass. Castlevania puts a giant mass of zombies on the other end of a brightly lit corridor from you and lets you have at them with your sanctified weapon of choice.

It’s nigh-impossible to do shock in the mission architect. Maybe a clever arrangement of chained objectives could pull it off, on the right map? I think certain giant monsters or oddly boned mobs can be posed so that by default they largely clip into the ground, as well. Suspense is hard, but still doable -- there are decayed environments and it’s possible to introduce “noise” into text or use allied mob groups posed in strange tableaux. But by default what you get out of the mission architect is Castlevania. (Or if you’re using the Ruladak cave, Castlevania with the lights off, which isn’t so much shock as it is a bad Castlevania.)

Now, there’s nothing wrong with Castlevania by itself. But it’s not very shocking or unsettling. I came into this expecting a meta-architect scenario, where this cult would somehow start manifesting in Architect itself and the system would “go haywire” trapping me inside with something that wanted to possess me. That at least is some dread-flavored horror. But what I got was Castlevania, with a plot twist I saw coming a long way away.

@GlaziusF

Running this on a mid-40s merc/TA mastermind, +0/x2 with bosses on.

---

Well. Judging from my contact’s description it looks like we’ve got a vigilante who wants to take that last step down.

Hmm. Well, it’s not like I’m not doing scutwork for people in Grandville anyway, but it feels a bit odd being treated as a hired thug by an outsider. What I won’t do for the feel of that legal tenderness.

Capturing a Mu boss, I get an objective to lead him to some databanks, but the splodge he responds to is on the door out. You can actually lead NPCs to databanks or other glowies now, which may make for a more eventful reception in this case. I’m guessing this is an old arc.

Anyway, I try and pry information out of the head of security, with about as much luck as trying to pry Captain Mako off his dinner, and go rummaging for a list of locations with a pretty minimal descriptor.

---

Apparently my contact’s power is developing a mind of its own, and she wants to know why. I wonder if it’s done something wrong, but a briefcase full of money can buy a whole lot of no questions.

Hmm. The Banished Pantheon say there’s some terrible power waking up in Ebon Angel, and I find the instructions for some kind of ritual using life force to breach a dimensional barrier. Presumably the Banished Pantheon want to bring their old gods back.

---

Ah. Okay. They made off with the head researcher for that purpose. Apparently we’re going to stop them so the world doesn’t come under someone else’s oppressive thumb, and so Ebon Angel can ask the Banished Pantheon some questions.

In the face.

Hmm. Okay. My contact’s SG buddy warns about some kind of trickery, and apparently the Mu mystic was brought in and then summarily ignored.

Well, the only thing to do is complete the mission.

Apparently Ebon Angel was the gateway, and Adamastor gave up its own... life force? to bring back the old gods.

Does Adamastor even have that in the conventional sense? Life force, I mean. I thought he was some kind of demon god who was sealed under the sea.

---

...why am I deciding to risk my own life to save the world, again? I mean, I’ve been a hired thug all this time. My contact seems awfully blase about this whole thing. It’s not like there isn’t some silly heroic type who’d just be chomping at the bit to do this.

...or her entire supergroup?

Anyway, the Hamidoffice gets used to good effect as the “green dimension”, and there are the standard boss masks, with big entourages and big ambushes.

I see the last ritual one floor down from the top, and when he goes down... the mission completes?

I run up top to see if there was some mistake, but... no. The last mission runs out before the top floor.

---

Storyline - ***. Why am I deciding to risk my own life to save the world, again? I can kind of buy this as a rogue arc, starting out with payment but eventually putting that by the wayside in order to be helpful/because conditions demand it. But my contact was reaching out to me because she didn’t want to involve her supergroup in things -- when it becomes more a matter of closing the giant rift that’ll unbanish the Pantheon they’d probably be more in favor.

Also there’s the issue that the Banished Pantheon are willing to sacrifice Adamastor for something as relatively fragile as this rift turns out to be. Maybe I hit it at the right time or something? Anyway, the Banished Pantheon shamans are actually all modern-day mortals who’ve gotten wrapped up in the cult. You could probably whip up a boss-level necro/storm custom to give up his life for the cause, rather than Adamastor.

Design - ***. The giant boss fights with giant ambushes are a pretty challenging way to end this, but given that the mission immediately before required me to fight a custom controller boss and a giant monster, it makes it seem like closing the rift isn’t really that big a deal.

Also, while the last mission works as kind of a weird green chaos monster version of the mission prior, can you pick a prior mission with a larger end room? About one-third of Adamastor was clipping through the roof tiles.

Though I’m not really taking off for this, other things like the Mu turning traitor in the first mission could be pulled off in more believable ways with modern escort technology.

Gameplay - ****. Mostly stock challenges here. The one custom is decent to fight on account of the help I’ve got with me at the time. For some reason the Mu escort in the first mission likes to run off into enemies and stare at them, which seemed to play into aggroing them on me.

Detail - ***. No real clues for the last mission here, when they’d kinda matter most. I guess if I had the sense that this portal was really an immanent danger that only I could stop I wouldn’t be so skeptical of how things turned out. But as it stands, my contact doesn’t seem too worried about it - this may be down to low morale, but she’s my only source for the truth of what’s going on.

Overall - ***. An overall solid arc against Arachnos and the Banished Pantheon that runs out of steam at the very end.

Tonight's arc: A Falling Angel (133390). Verdict - ***. Review below in this thread.

(Other already-played arcs encountered in the process of picking this random:
Dr. Dave and the Copper Legion (60280). *****
The Fight of Angels (329420). *
Spanks for the Memories (21144). **
The Portal Bandits (3326). ****
The Chronal Revision Engine (117678), which seems to have vanished since it was first posted.)

My current queue:

• A review of Kali's Scythe (445456).
• A review of Cadence (466154).

If anybody else wants in, the instructions are in the first post. 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 doesn't even have to be as long as the critical monstrosities I find myself putting out now and again.

Tonight's arc: Dhahabu Kingdom and the Unfathomable Nightmare of Sand (453511). Verdict - ****. Review in MA Forums Thread.

My current queue:

• A review of Kali's Scythe (445456), no earlier than November 11th.

If anybody else wants in, the instructions are in the first post. 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 doesn't even have to be as long as the critical monstrosities I find myself putting out now and again.

Review as part of the CoHMR Aggregator thread.

@GlaziusF

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

---

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

Anyhow, the doom drought approaches.

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

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

Ah, okay. The Circle came over from our world too.

---

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

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

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

---

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

---

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

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

---

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Eh, no need to really manage an either-or on those endings. I mean, the Arachnos could come back from their dimensional bunker or whatever, and you and TV could spot this from a long way off and decide you liked this whole independence thing, so you'd go buzz off and open a local affiliate station somewhere else entirely. Not like there's a shortage of somewhere elses.

Tonight's arc: To Reign In Hell (448234). Verdict - ****. Review in MA Forums Thread.

My current queue:

• A review of Dhahabu Kingdom and the Unfathomable Nightmare of Sand (453511).
• A review of Kali's Scythe (445456), no earlier than November 11th.

If anybody else wants in, the instructions are in the first post. 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 doesn't even have to be as long as the critical monstrosities I find myself putting out now and again.

Review done as part of the CoHMR Aggregator project.

@GlaziusF

Playing this on a high 20s necro/dark mastermind, +0/x2 with bosses on.

---

War. War never changes.

Nah, just funnin’ ya.

Ah, TV’s kept itself alive in the interim. Hey, TV! Let’s resume your regularly scheduled programming!

When in doubt, hit the first console you see!

Ah, alright, got some more stuff to click. The prison room kinda makes this map a pain, though, any chance you could come up with one with less height?

Anyway, automated defenses spring up with various amusing malfunctions as I move through the place.

---

Ah, TV. Father, mother. Secret lover. Time to get the eyes in the sky back online.

So I encountered some of Arbiter Daos’s troops trying to get power back to the rest of Arachnos, and took them down, then took a look at the spy satellites. Bloody Bay’s got some weird kinda force field around it, which makes it seem a bit like this was the coming storm. One satellite tells me the Rogue Isles are doing just fine, but others say that a rising tide has put Cap Au Diable underwater.

Well.

There aren’t exactly many bits of the Rogue Isles that are really that high up. You’d think rampant flooding would qualify under “devastation”.

Also this map has a flier hanger, which is basically a prison room but without the force fields that ruin your tab-targeting.

---

Hmm. TV seems to be pointing me to somewhere in Grandville, suggesting that whatever affected Bloody Bay might have originated from there. Well, let’s have a look.

And play in a band. Just to be safe.

Hmm. Okay, I’ve got a librarian from the Legacy Chain tracing the trail of a spell that summoned a world-ravager. Judging from this bulletin board, it would seem an Arachnos researcher left a trail behind him when he was exploring the astral depths.

Oh! Interesting. Some ancient artifact from the revival of the CoT contained a magician who was employed to contact the Shivan ur-conscious. ...and then things went predictably south.

---

And now it’s time to end... uh... a gestalt capable of exploding the sun.

Dearie me.

Well, I rescue the ghost, an illusion/flintlock pistolero. I hear grave news from topside (through the comms of some fighters) as most of the attacking forces seem to be getting wrecked, but after breaking off a stalagmite Armageddon is summoned.

Hmm.

Is he a custom? Might be worth putting some bone bits on him to better get the look of the Shivans.

Anyway, with the help of some ally Void Stalkers (as this is THEIR planet to ruin, damn it!) he goes down hard.

And... somehow Arachnos pops back out of its many fortified bunkers, like nothing ever happened? When the guy in the radio tower spouted off his death message about “well, there goes half the force”, I thought that “half the force” actually meant that half the surviving Arachnos were there in that building.

So in the final desperate push to stop the Earth from being sunnihilated, Arachnos held back enough forces to rule the Rogue Isles again?

Or did Dr. Aeon bring them in from some alternate dimension, as the closing sendoff may or may not indicate?

---

Storyline - ***. You had me going right up until the end. This was a world full of mysterious destruction and burgeoning opportunity, and I was facing down with the ongoing cause of it all, ready to strap a TV to my arm and head out into the wasteland to build my own empiARACHNOS STATUS QUO.

Seriously, that comes out of nowhere, and I can’t really think of why. I mean, part of the fun of the post-apocalypse is that everything from the pre-apocalypse is somehow gone or changed, and just having Arachnos reassert itself at the end there was just ridiculously jarring.

Design - *****. Missions packed with interesting stuff to do and see, with very reasonable standard enemy groups (or subsets thereof) and various customs mostly for ally details and flavor. Aside from maybe boning up the end boss I wouldn’t suggest much else.

Gameplay - ****. Really the only irritating thing here is poking around the Arachnos base prison/flier rooms looking for stuff to click. So many little alcoves on multiple layers.

Detail - *****. Some really great work here with both TV and the custom descriptions.

Overall - ****. Call this 6 - 2. It’s a great ride, but right at the end it crashes hard. There’s evidence that something may have changed during this arc’s writing - I find alternating clues in one mission describing the Rogue Isles as mostly underwater and largely unscathed. Really, bringing Arachnos back like nothing went wrong doesn’t fit with the post-apocalyptic timbre or most of the details as presented.

Tonight's arc: The Icari (458576). Verdict - ***. Review in MA Forums Thread.

My current queue:

• A review of Dhahabu Kingdom and the Unfathomable Nightmare of Sand (453511).
• Reviews of Kali's Scythe (445456) and To Reign In Hell (448234)

If anybody else wants in, the instructions are in the first post. 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 doesn't even have to be as long as the critical monstrosities I find myself putting out now and again.

Review as part of the CoHMR Aggregator thread.

@GlaziusF

Running this on a mid-20s mind/kin controller, +1/x0 with bosses on. I’m expecting I’ll have allies to benefit from the various buffs. We’ll see how accurate that is.

---

Okay, time to see what’s new on news.local.paragon.... Ah, so a renowned supergroup has shown up on the scene to fight the Council!

And the impetus for me to do anything there is...? Usually there’s something like that in a briefing. An impetus, I mean. Even the “all units be advised to just let Unbelievable Man handle this one” scanner message has you remembering he was taking part in a massive companywide crossover in the Shadow Shard at the time.

I pop Not-States, Not-Psyche, Not-Storm, Not-Citadel, and Not-Mynx from their tiny tiny squads of captors, ditch them so as not to make things trivial on myself, and then get Maestro in my ear when the last one’s free. Honestly half their dialogue, like Not-Cap’s, seemed to indicate they’d be running off on their own instead of following me around, so it was a bit of a surprise that they’d follow me in the first place.

Maybe escalate the guards up from easy to hard to make it clear that bringing them around with you is kind of desirable?

Anyway, it looks like this meteor wasn’t an ordinary space rock, based on the fragment I pick up.

(I wouldn’t mind the clue also talking about Maestro’s speech about the Circle. If he spawns in your ear his opening dialogue is easy to miss.)

Maybe you could consider some alternate sorts of capture animations and accompanying scenarios other than the “thrashing in energy ring” one? Makes the debrief seem like these guys are giant jerks.

---

I wish that the royal blue and royal purple autocolors were a little bit lighter. They’re pretty tough to make out against the standard briefing background.

Looks like I’m tracking down this meteor to the Circle.

I find some obelisks carved with the true names of various heroes. And... the true blueprint of the robot. Okay. Apparently the CoT are pulling something like Arachnos did with their Jade Spider scenario, only for five specific heroes.

Hero to zero in the space of one mission. Ask not for whom the plothammer strikes, it strikes for thee.

---

The Council had apparently planned this whole thing out, including (?) steering the meteor in from space.

Or was that just a natural phenomenon?

Anyway, Maestro’s second-in-command and liaison to the CoT is leading this raid, and he rants about how the depowered Icari are going to be minced up by the city’s villain groups once their secret identities get out.

The debriefing seems to suggest I had all the Icari in tow, but I dragged them all back to the door before fighting the end boss in case something silly happened. Is the escort out not required? If it is then it’s safe enough to say that they’ve just run off.

---

...apparently I found some sort of device on Lt. Briggs? That would have been nice to pick up as a clue. Anyway, the Council apparently knew where these guys’ secret base was, though that doesn’t make much sense, at least not as a direct result of the CoT ritual. It may have uncovered their identities, but unless the civilians paid for the SG base as well, I don’t see how that follows.

I mean, unless the information was gathered as part of a completely separate espionage op. Which is fine in its own way, and could maybe be folded into a clue from Lt. Briggs, maybe a set of dossiers or something produced by Council intel.

Apparently the base’s fire suppression systems are going off.

Hmm. Okay, so it looks like the local equivalent of Mephisto paid a visit to the Icari and offered them their powers back with an extra dash of reckless. I would not have predicted this. Not-States decided to play the field and his wife couldn’t deal, Not-Psyche area-blasted some thugs and hit a fan, Not-Storm did something unspecified but nasty and wrecked her contact when he came to talk it out, Not-Citadel wrecked the people who came to repossess him, and Not-Mynx drank an entire barrel of Superadine and shredded her contact while high.

And they burned the base down to destroy the evidence.

---

I’m... taking matters into my own hands here. Well. Alright. Five elite bosses -- for some reason I remember them being “just” bosses in the first mission.

Good thing I got a Shivan, even if he’s gently used.

Anyway, everybody talks about their mysterious benemalefactor, but it’s just a brawl against the original 5, no ominous shadow of whoever shows up.

...at least I think no shadow shows up. My last Shivan was starting to run out of skull juice so I just clicked exit when the mission completed.

For an arc that’s supposed to be standalone it definitely seems to be setting up for a part 2, with the Icari vanishing from custody, no doubt at the hands of whatever force gave them back their powers.

---

Storyline - ***. This story feels a little compressed. I’m guessing you made it for the Aeon contest? It’s taking a dramatic transformation in characters but because of the limit on missions wraps up that arc in a single one because that’s all the time that’s left before the big final fight. It also removes any actual things the Icari have done for me to care about them, because based on the first mission they come off as just heroes getting way too much publicity for their own good. There’s also a tease for the course of two missions about whatever gave the Icari their reckless repowers that never really pays off.

Second, while some of the character pressures kinda make sense, the ones on Not-Storm and Not-Citadel -- recapture by the INS and the military -- really don’t. Not in an absolute sense, of course; I can easily see this being the plot of some comic book, but... how do I put this?

Okay. In the preludes to his Astro City trades, Kurt Busiek talks about people writing in to tell him how realistic the comic is. They can’t be literal about this, as his comic features trolls, giants, animated fashion dolls, and shapeshifting alien spies. What makes Astro City seem realistic is that it’s set in a world where superheroes have been around for generations and society has gotten used to having them around, as opposed to your average comic book where society is exactly like modern society and superheroes showed up in issue #1 a month ago and have to fit in.

City of Heroes is also set in the former world, rather than the latter. The government has tried to draft-slash-pressure superheroes before. It was called the Might For Right Act. There are plaques all over the city describing the public protest and resistance, and the subsequent repeal. The people involved in its passage had a collective snit fit/freakout and emerged years later as the Malta Group. What I’m ultimately getting at here is that the members of a supposedly high-profile supergroup would probably be aware of this precedent and the substantial support structure in place to avoid such a thing.

Design - ****. There’s some good visual work on the Icari and their civilian and corrupted forms. The missions are pretty reasonable mirrors of what they’re intended to be and there’s generally a decent amount of relevant stuff to look at.

Gameplay - ***. First, five escorts scattered through a four-story building is a bit excessive. I made a couple of assumptions here -- that the Icari in their civilian forms could be hurt, and that escorting them out was required. It may be that neither of these are true, but given that the setup seems to indicate the Icari are in mortal danger, they seemed appropriate to make.

Second, five consecutive EB fights with no random spawns in between to recharge inspirations from is pretty much a recipe for exiting out and seeing the inspiration vendor, whether via hospital or other means.

I’m not sure how much you can really help either of these. Given the setup they don’t seem easy to address. But they’re still there.

Detail - **. No, this isn’t for the clues there are. They paint a pretty reasonable picture of what’s going on, and the color-coding of clues and dialogue is a decent tool, though I think the order you set up (whose clue is first, second, etc. in the set of five) gets a little wonky in mission 4. This is for the clues there aren’t. The ones not about the Icari’s transformation but about the “backing story”.

That the Council are working with the Circle at all is initially mentioned only in a missable quip from Maestro. And beyond the depowerment ritual it’s not really clear what the Circle are bringing to the table here. Do they also find out about the Icari’s civilian HQ? Their supergroup base? Or is that more the provenance of Council intelligence? And how the heck did that meteor hit Atlas Park? Accident? Ritual? Gravity satellite?

And who’s the benemalefactor who repowers the Icari? Because the resurgence comes out to be pretty broad-spectrum I don’t initially consider it to be a Council or a Circle plot, but rather the action of some more generalist tempter, the local equivalent of Mephisto. Except I don’t know who that might be. I don’t think there’s really anybody with a particular reputation for doing such things, unless such a being shows up in the tip/morality missions (haven’t really got a chance to play a lot of them yet).

Overall - ***. Honestly this feels like two story arcs smashed together with the ends hacked off -- one that serves as an introduction to the Icari, with my character finding out about a plot against them (possibly in a dream sequence where the Tempter tries to play off some possible envy of mine) that ends when I save their civilian selves from the Council and they run off; and a second that draws out their reckless repowering and my confrontation with them a bit more, with perhaps a final showdown against a shadow of the Tempter, who’ll never really be gone for good. As it is the progression is good, but it starts without much backing and the end feels raw.

Tonight's arc: 30 Minute Hero (386310). Verdict - ***. Review in MA Forums Thread.

My current queue:

• The Icari (458576), no earlier than October 30th.

If anybody else wants in, the instructions are in the first post. 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 doesn't even have 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 low-level Will/DMelee tanker, +0/x1 with bosses on.

---

“Endanger” is a verb. The sendoff talking about “people endanger” should be talking about “people in danger” or “people endangered”.

Anyway, my contact for this arc interrupts me in the middle of something else to collapse at my feet and get me an address.

...the Goldbrickers? In Paragon City? That’s pretty big. And why are they at an arcane site? That generally isn’t their bag.

Well, apparently somebody’s paying a lot of scratch for whatever thing they dug up. I guess that’s good enough?

---

Time to go back, Jack, and do it again. ...but exactly why I have to do this in 15 minutes isn’t clear. Maybe the “compass” in the clue should be getting close to telling a certain time, and I assume that’s when I’ll get kicked back?

The surviving tablets talk about a powerful mage who had his power sealed away in an artifact by an angel, and the raid leader talks about some guy who paid him to get this artifact.

Perhaps the two are related.

---

Hmm. So now I’m going back to the raid site again? It seems like I already know what I need to.

Nope, back to the raid site. In 10 minutes, which is a challenge on a pre-DO character against Goldbrickers.

...but it doesn’t seem like I get any new clues or insights.

Oh. Okay. Says the debrief, I sped through there so I could go to the meeting site afterward. Apparently I know that this isn’t the sort of time loop you get reset to the start of when it goes away.

---

Well, at least it’s a tiny cave. With only a... claws/fire control EB. With a hold! And a blind! Most classes don’t even get status protection until later on, or perception increases for that matter.

There are a lot of distracto glowies around his lair, but none of them seem to really tell me anything new.

---

Storyline - ***. The only problem I have with the story is that I somehow know how this artifact is causing a time loop - that after a particular interval it kicks me back in the timestream to a particular place, and that when this whole thing is over everything I’ve done will remain done, hence the need to save people and wreck the archmage in, what is it, 30 minutes?

Maybe the researcher could give me some kind of rundown on this thing when I meet her for the first time for the second time, or I could take some information from her car.

Design - ***. The caves are all well and good, but I question your choice of enemy group to populate them. Goldbrickers are one of the few enemy groups which are in-story native to the Rogue Isles -- Coralax, the Gremlins, Slag Golems, and Arachnoids all qualify here -- so it’s unusual for them to hop the ocean just for a modest payday.

Especially since there’s a decent concentration of mercenaries and artifact-hunting enemy groups in Paragon City as it is. Hellions, Outcasts, Tsoo, Sky Raiders, Warriors...

Goldbrickers are modestly resilient and deal out cascading damage from range, making them slow to fight solo and even slower in teams. It doesn’t matter how small the map is -- if it’s any size at all 10 minutes isn’t much time to deal with Goldbrickers, and the time penalty from a loading screen makes it even worse. So they interact badly with time limits, and there’s not much of a narrative reason for them to be in Paragon.

Gameplay - ***. Pre-Stamina pre-SO characters, who this arc seems to be aiming at, don’t generally have the recovery ability or power to put out the stream of damage needed to drop the relevant Goldbrickers. And the end boss pulls out status effects that non-armor-primary characters (so everyone but Tanks) may not have the tools to deal with.

CoV does throw out elite bosses in their low-level arcs, but the most they can do in the way of status effects is some knockaround now and again.

I can understand that this arc might be considered as a challenge for higher-level people exemping down to 20, after the pattern of some Ouro challenges which are no doubt attempted in this way. But in that case, why just not lock it at 20? There’s a little too much here for level 10s to manage.

Detail - ***. After about the second mission there aren’t really new elements in the detail. Admittedly some of this is because the first three missions are exactly the same, but I figured there’d be more surviving tablets on my third pass through the cave. And the clues for the final boss’s chambers all seem to be variations on the original theme - angel fights magician, magician has a hate on.

Admittedly, probably nobody is going to bother with glowies or reading clues with the excessive time pressure on. But after the mission objectives are completed the timer goes away, and reading the clues is a bit like opening presents at that point.

Overall - ***. Ultimately the story plays out a little too much like my hero has already read the script, and the Goldbrickers, while challenging, don’t really have much reason to be there.