Lone Superpower

Well shucks, here I thought this was my best arc and... nope! I'm not mad though. I brought it upon myself by asking for it to be reviewed in the first place. There are a couple things I want to address though.

I swear I have a contact bio written in for Dr. Vahz. I have no clue why it's not showing up.
Proto-Vahzilok was meant to be a *******. That's one of the things that makes him merely a prototype.
I also made the betrayal predictable on purpose. Obviously I'm the only one who thought this was in fact a keen idea. I guess I can retool the dialogue to get rid of that, but it'll be some work.

Thank you for taking the time to do all that, Bubbah. I know the whole playing + recording + editing process is a massive timesink. I'll work a few of your suggestions in eventually. Not all, but some.

What I find just as fascinating as the videos is watching you improve in their quality and direction with each new one released. I commend you for getting so much better at these things so quickly.

Okay, I gave it a whirl.

So I didn't understand that the arc was told in flashback form until after completing the first mission. Once I realized that, I was kinda blown away. good storytelling device. Usually I don't like it when arcs have their level ranges go all over the place, but I will make an exception here since you were telling the story of the player's career. Clever use of the level ranges honestly. In additon, the story overall was creative and well thought-out. The map choices were appropriate for their respective missions. Misson compass instructions were concise and clear (vague instuctions are a huge minus in my book)... for the first four missions anyway.

Now for the negatives. Just like ashcraft said, I too was expecting something other than a kill-all for defeating the psychic blocks. I was looking for a destructable object or two. I had to come back and read ashcraft's review to learn otherwise. So you need to either get rid of the kill-all mission requirment or make the compass instructions more clear. It also kinda bothered me to suggest that the player is great friends with Deirdre, yet our only interaction with the woman is coming in, saving her, and she runs away. That's being friends with a woman like Mario is a friend to Princess Peach. Actually no, that's a bad anology. At least Mario hangs out with Peach on his off-time.

I think it would do wonders to establish this so-called friendship by having Deidre as an ally in one of the flashback missions. Nothing quite speaks friendship like being comrads in arms. I would see opportunity to fixing this in the third mission by switching Percy and Deirdre around. I mean you save Deirdre first and then she helps you the rest of the mission to save Percy.

Lastly, it kinda bothered me that this arc suggested that you've watched this woman grow up from the start of your career to present. It suggests that your hero has been in Paragon for, what? Ten years at the very least. Makes me feel old :/ But that's a personal pet-peeve and I don't hold it against your score. Overall I voted this arc a 4/5. Fix the two problems of the unclear instructions in mission five, and doing something to make me feel like this woman is actually my friend, and it easily goes into five-star territory.

I just played this arc, and oh my christ I hated it. I hated it so much I dug up this seven month-old topic to tell you all why.

So yeah, the story is good. The first mission was usual fare of beating up the CoT because they were up to shenanigans with stolen souls. After the first mission I was ready to give this arc a five star rating. then things started to go wrong.

Second mission, going after the 5th column, or council, I forget. Except this arc also added those special peacebringer 5th column that can shield themselves... and sheild others. Despite technically being stealthable to the boss, the boss battle still took more 10 minutes because it was a constant chore switching between an "only affecting self" power banish, bosses that shield themselves at 20% and then heal back up to 60%, and a basic inability to hit anything because there were shields up all over the place. (I play at 6 hero equivalency on my tanker) You might think this unfair, but this was annoying enough to warrent minus half a star.

Third mission, not too bad. I have nothing to say, really. It does however have an unrequired boss at the beginning, something that's not a problem now but does become one in later missions.

Fourth mission, this is where crap really starts to hit the fan. It tells you to gather medical supplies and defeat the raid leader. So I see a box right up front to click, is that the medical supplies? Nope! Now here's my biggest gripe with this mission, it tells you defeat the raid leader, but it doesn't give you the name of the guy. THEN it proceeds to give I think three named bosses that aren't required for mission completion. So vague instructions combined with lots of unrequired details amounts to I don't know what the heck I'm doing. But the worst part was the actual medical supplies. They're a defendable object. Pro tip: Never EVER use defendable objects. They're going to blow up. The user is going to fail. And that's what happened to me. Heck, even actual developer-produced missions have only used defendable objects like three times from what I've seen. That should tell you right there to never use them! So yeah, that was rage-inducing. Minus two stars for this mission.

Final mission, beat up 5th column. Once again we get the vague and unclear instruction to defeat the raid leader without telling us the name of the guy. I In fact skipped this raid leader, who was at the beginning, because experience of the past two missions told me that he was probably an unrequired boss. What a twist to make the first boss I see actually be required. so yeah, I skipped over him and basically cleared the next two floors before I came back to him. On that note, this mission gives you allies... the allies are Lieutenants. Another pro tip: Don't give lieutenants as allies. They go splat in about seven seconds. Give us bosses or elite bosses only please. So I finally defeat the boss that was actually required after all which finally spawned the "center" the center once again being another vague instruction. I guess he was easy enough to find, being the guy in the green military uniform tied up in ropes, but still a name would be helpful. Of course rescuing him spawns an ambush, which I really shouldn't hold against the arc, but I was just so annoyed at this point I couldn't help to rage even more from it. Minus another half a star for this mission.

So as I said, this arc has a good story that clearly had lots of thought put into it. This arc also has absolutely terrible level design that cripples any good qualities it had like a blow to the head with a softball bat. This arc gets 2/5 stars, the story being the only reason it didn't get 1/5. I ask you now, how did this abomination get developers choice status? I ask the developers to revisit this arc and rethink their decision here.

My newest is in the 15-20 range. It's 5 missions long, and there's only one custom mob, an elite boss found in mission 4. Called "The Rogue Vahzilok" and ARC ID#405340. Check it out. I've been looking for feedback on it anyway.

Oh yeah, this game is weird like this, Mac, but I think I know your problem. There's also a regions folder under /owner/documents/Sim City 4/Regions, try placing it in that one instead of the SM4 folder under Program Files

My mistake, I posted the wrong extension. Please try again now.

That's right, it took me a couple days, but I painstakingly hand-formed this custom region for Sim City 4 to look like the Paragon City peninsula we all know and love. It's not 100% accurate, but I'm pretty proud of it. Simply download the archive, pull the folder it and drop it in your /Regions/ folder in Sim City 4 and you should be good to go!
http://yutz.fybertech.com/Paragon%20City.rar