CoHMR Aggregator (a review thread)

Tonight's arc (that actually is tonight's arc): Holding Down the Fort (379065). Verdict - *****. Review in MA Forums Thread.

My current queue:

• Reviews of the remainder of the War Against the Undying One series: Drawing on the South (98754) and Striking at the Heart (139463), starting no earlier than March 30.
• Reviews of (randomly chosen) Tis Nobler in the Mind (257226), Drakule vs. The Werewolf Bikers from Hell! (340316), Made to Wave the Flag (384776), starting no earlier than April 5.

Tonight's arc: Drawing on the South (98754). Verdict - ***. Review lower in this thread.

My current queue:

• Reviews of the remainder of the War Against the Undying One series: Striking at the Heart (139463), starting no earlier than April 6.
• Reviews of (randomly chosen) Tis Nobler in the Mind (257226), Drakule vs. The Werewolf Bikers from Hell! (340316), Made to Wave the Flag (384776), starting no earlier than April 5.

@GlaziusF

Playing this on the same high-40s DBlade/Fire brute. +1 x2 with bosses on.

---

So, Screya. Homeland of the cultists we routed in the last arc? Presumably?

I'm terrible with real names, so with fake names I'm DOUBLE terrible. It would be nice to have a reminder?

Also this whole "northern reaches of the sourthern kingdoms" takes some mental gymnastics to resolve. There's no map inside the cover here!

Maybe you can just call it "the contested border between Screya and Eisenstadt, one of the kingdoms of the south"?

Anyway, the customs. Minions: AR/regen with Nemesis muskets, axe/will. Lieuts: archers with aim. Ack. Bosses: plant/storm (who's tough to mark as defeated because of how buggy Carrion Creepers is right now - the pets follow you around for a while and count as part of the boss) and a maceman.

The place is just lousy with patrols, though. They tend to pile up at the bottom of hills, but given how they can move they're a modest risk for walking in onto any given boss fight.

Also this means the map is full of minions, which doesn't help to get a feel for this enemy group... if we'll ever see them again.

---

And now it's time to meet the actual people in charge of this country.

Oh. Recolored and renamed Nemesis.

Not that I'd put it past them being the actual article. Nemesis is everywhere.

Anyway, another enemy group. The necro/fire armor wizards from the last arc, with dark/fire blast and DBlade/Invuln lieutenants, and broadsword/shield minions.

Here's the thing. Broadsword is 7.5% defense debuff per hit. So one of these minion patrols can easily get a hero without defense sets in to "always gets hit" territory. With the shield and the dark blasts, it can be frustrating to even try to hit ONE of the swarm that's flooring your defense.

Also the giant number of patrols makes it tough to tell where you've been. If you're only using targeting to navigate that's a lot of false positives.

---

Anyway, now it's time to get urban and... do exactly what I did last mission, except indoors? Maybe?

Huh. The midnighter club. I honestly woulda expected a warehouse.

Anyway, I find a silent boss in here with a large spawn, who I guess was the commander? But he doesn't say a thing.

Also, stacking defense debuffs (which dual blades can also pile on) can really get to you.

Out of the four clues I have so far, three of them are dossiers. On the Undying God's army, the Not Nemesis, and... how to find things on outdoor maps?

It's not a bad idea to talk about, say, the scene outside this building as the watch gets up and moves out.

---

Oh. Keelin was a her in the first mission. Rather shapeless robe, plus the mist, made it rather hard to tell.

And now she's off to spec fungus.

The... Thurston Meander. Just down the beach from the Lovey Lounge, I suppose.

You can stick with calling it the wild deep. That's fine with me.

Anyway, the place is full of fungus men. Around the druid, they attack me, but he's cool with it since they'll just grow back. Keelin has been surrounded by more of them, and she sends me after a "mothering stone" - a hive spire in the last room.

I get clues about where she went and what she wants, but no actual clue for this stone.

---

So there's going to be a public execution to raise morale, except they're all going to get drowned in a flood of red dead broadsworders, and I have to go save Keelin's bacon? Again?

Eesh.

A whole ton of patrols and enemies, just all over the place. Freeing Keelin awakes some keen buried Krakens to help against the end boss (Baphomet) but since I'm Fire already I don't really bother.

Also because the dang things can be anywhere on this ridiculously huge outdoor map.

Oh. Okay, this wasn't a public execution (where'd I get that idea?) but a fight that was getting pushed back to a town, with the Baphoclone leading the charge.

My contact talks down the whole business with summoning the Kraken clones, but he thinks that with the demon gone the Undying One may be vulnerable?

I guess?

Anyway, we're going to wreck him next arc, so something must have changed. Somehow.

---

Storyline - ***. My contact calls Keelin's journey a bit of a pointless endeavor, and on the face of it I agree with him. I never saw anything about her motivation, why she's doing this now, why she thinks it will be so effective.

As a result I kind of lose the plot after mission 3 and never really pick it back up. I don't know what happens in the last mission to set up the next arc - I thought it was a desperate attempt to prevent a town from being overrun.

Design - **. I feel for you. I really do. There are practically no maps in the MA that work for a medieval-era society, and none at all that can really do the indoors well.

But outdoor maps are a pain, and the giant pile of patrols made it worse to figure out where I'd been. (Also the fights, weirdly enough. Nemesis kept winning them and pinged on my ally radar when I was looking for recruitables. I guess range and explosions helped there.)

The renamed enemies and the customs are all pretty evocative, though I'd like to see some more color variations among the enemies in both factions. They've all got the same brown/green or red/black palette, which makes it tough to tell whether you're seeing one group or two tough patrols that walked into each other.

The allies in the last mission are kinda keen but since they and the boss can literally be anywhere on the entire map, going to grab them is a bit of a fool's errand.

Gameplay - ***. Minions do -7.5% defense per melee attack. And I was regularly hitting four of them at a time. That's basically perma-flooring defense.

Even if I wasn't on a fire armor character, I think it might have worked out a bit better if all the minions had, like, fire melee. Lieuts and bosses doing a modest amount of -def on their own is enough of that without being always hit.

Detail - ****. All the renames and descriptions are pretty nice, but I take issue with the clues. Most of them seem to be general briefing on the various factions, and the fourth mission in particular has two clues for the people you meet but not one for the supposedly important stuff you actually pick up. I realize you're probably bumping up against the limit on space, but I don't feel that knowing the history of the relevant forces really helps my understanding of what's going on.

Overall - ***. The minions really drag down the custom group, and the giant outdoor hunting around really drags down the arc.

Guess I'll have to be happy with your 3 star, then, because while I can add writing... they're medieval guys with swords outdoors. Maybe the concept just doesn't work for AE and I fail, I suppose.

Tonight's arc: Chapter and Verse (26065). Verdict - **. Review lower in this thread.

My current queue:

• Reviews of the remainder of the War Against the Undying One series: Striking at the Heart (139463), starting no earlier than April 6.
• Reviews of (randomly chosen) Tis Nobler in the Mind (257226), Drakule vs. The Werewolf Bikers from Hell! (340316), Made to Wave the Flag (384776), starting no earlier than April 5.

@GlaziusF

Running this on a low-40s merc/TA mastermind, +0 x1 with bosses on.

---

My contact's a death mage. You can drop contact descriptions on these guys now, so it may be worth conveying what makes this death mage different from all other death mages.

Besides the bag of gold he's waving in my direction, I mean. That's taken for granted.

Ooh, gonna lead an undead army. Nice. (Though the general probably has to be undead too, in which case not so nice.)

But first, a little personal politics, taking away the thing my contact wants from the unworthy sorts who have it right now.

Huh. Okay, so the boss and the book both start out active, but you're supposed to get the book second judging from these clues. You can actually chain glowies to activate in this fashion now.

Myself, I found the book down a side passage (probably another Back glowie that decided to go Middle -- if you mark it Middle it'll show up in the back, or ought to) and was rather confused when the boss talked about letting me take the book and go.

---

And now this guy's apprentice is trying to upstage him with the book. Eesh.

I get a look at what I assume will be the customs for the rest of the arc. Minion zombies with melee weapons and lieuts who throw ice around. I don't see any other kind, but do see half a dozen ice, so I assume they're the only kind.

The allied patrols of CoT are a nice bit to establish who I'm working with, at least.

Contact rescued, I fight Auraan. He's an ice blast/dark blast (maybe ice blast/necro, but I didn't see any zombies) elite boss. He doesn't last long under my fire, but doesn't say much to support my contact's spiel about "drawing him out". I don't think it's unreasonable for him to act like Nyctyck's alive and facing him.

---

And now heroes have the book. Man, this thing's turning into a right proper MacGuffin.

Anyway, new customs. AR/Dev minions and AR/Will lieuts.

Honestly, it should be the other way around, and here's why. Manipulation sets like Devices are generally mixes of control powers and melee. So what you get are large amounts of minions with control powers and small amounts of slightly resistant lieutenants.

Even if the control power is just an immob with a little slow on it, it's still irritating in large numbers.

The boss is ice blast/ice manip. Man, that's like the third ice-related custom this arc.

And the book's gone on to MAGI. Eeesh.

---

But the heroes haven't dropped it off yet. I make some loose circles of the Atlas Park map, finding the dark/rad defender with the book first, then the spine/invuln scrapper...

Eesh. He pops Unstoppable and regenerates his entire health bar before it wears off. That's just murder.

Both the scrapper and some other invuln dude are in a park to the south of AP.

Energy Melee/Invuln. With Build Up. AND Unstoppable.

I pop a Shivan but he actually manages to destroy it... not that it would have helped against Unstoppable. Eeeesh.

In case you can't tell, I really hate Unstoppable. For the next two minutes it's better if I run off and stare at a wall. And Build Up is just a short, pointless increase in lethality.

---

Curse your sudden but inevitable betrayal!

Anyway, the... mmm. Vaults of Mu? Spirit City? One of those. It's a nice map, but there's no real indication this mission should take place in any kind of spirit world.

Also, pacing works now, so unless you wanted your mission to start out with a bunch of greens you might want to make it more standard.

For some reason Nyctyck, though he's probably supposed to be a pretty tough necro/dark mastermind, doesn't summon any zombies or anything either.

Necro/dark, by the way, can be pretty synergistically overpowering, if enough -tohit gets stacked on any given target.

For a mastermind it's not as much concern, since I can just stand away from my pets, but other classes may not have it so easy.

And in the end, no one gets it.

---

Storyline - ***. Pretty basic. Villain wants a thing. Other villains do too, because that's what villains are like. Heroes take it away, because that's what heroes are like. And when the villain finally gets it he backstabs your villain. In the end, no one gets to keep it.

A bit too basic, really. Aside from the customs, the necroalchemical tome doesn't really inform what's going on here. It doesn't corrupt people or summon ancient forgotten cannibal gods or demand sacrifices. It's just a power crunch.

Design - ***. Aside from the request to swap the custom heroes so there's controls on lieuts and armor on minions, the custom rank and file are pretty nice visually and distinct. But the difficulty kinda peaks in mission 4, beating down 3 EBs. Going after 1 in the finale just feels like a downer at that point.

Also, you may want to take advantage of the glowie chaining to make the first mission work like the plot says it does.

Gameplay - *. All of this is for mission 4, really. Trying to find unique spawns on an outdoor map is bad enough. Trying to find them without any kind of particle-spewing animation to distinguish them is worse. And when TWO of them have Unstoppable, meaning the most productive thing I can do when they pop it is to run away and stare at a wall until it wears off, that just adds to the frustration. Lose the tier 9, lose buildup, and maybe scale them all down to normal boss rank to make the finale seem a little more like a capper.

As an aside, I'm not sure why the custom MMs didn't summon. Maybe it's all the badstat zones and damage ticks that Trick Arrow can pull off.

Detail - ***. There were some patrols sounding off in the third mission, and some allies in mission 2 to add a little atmosphere, but the final mission was completely empty of notable details, save the boss.

I would at least like to see the bosses of those custom groups show up as boss details - mission 3 has a good opportunity for the heroes, missions 2 or 5 for the villains - but I realize you're probably in a bit of a space crunch. What was it, 12, 13 customs? That can't leave a lot of room.

Overall - **. Admittedly, I'm skewing this a bit low. But this is the scenario: scouring a large outdoor map for the three undistinguished groups I have to kill. Walking off web grenades after every fight. I meet the dark/rad and I expect reasonable times ahead.

But then, in the last little swath of green, an EB pops Unstoppable. Waiting it out is enough of a bore, but then I see Unyielding around the next target in line, and when he gets low on health and the second round of waiting out Unstoppable begins, well.

It's a decent enough arc. I imagine the many customs don't leave space for much else but a simple story and sparse detail. But web grenades are pains to walk off, and waiting out Unstoppable is bad enough without having to do it twice.

Realized there were some requests for re-reviews upthread that I should take a bit more seriously. So. Tonight's arc: a rereview of The Consequences of War (227331). Verdict - ***. Review in MA Forums Thread.

My current queue:

• Reviews of the remainder of the War Against the Undying One series: Striking at the Heart (139463), starting no earlier than April 6.
• Reviews of (randomly chosen) Tis Nobler in the Mind (257226), Drakule vs. The Werewolf Bikers from Hell! (340316), Made to Wave the Flag (384776), starting no earlier than April 5.
• A rereview of The Casualties of War (241496), no earlier than April 12.
• A rereview of Matchstick Women (3369).

Ouch! Well, to each his own, I guess. I'll address your points in my thread. In the mean time, I tell you what... There's no sense in subjecting us both to unneccessary agony. While you made a couple of valid points that I've already corrected, it's pretty obvious that re-reviewing my arcs wasn't something that filled you with glee. Don't feel obligated to take on "Casualties of War" unless you're just feeling masochistic. Somehow I get the sense that, regardless of everyone else's opinion, you'll find it painful.

I just added another arc to Mission Review:

Suppression - 374481 - @Gypsy Rose

I would love your feed back on this arc.

Thanks

I'm looking for reviews on

7662 - The Labors of Rustam: The Cold and the Dark (Arc ID 54293)

7662 - The Labors of Rustam II: Rustam and Sohrab (Arc ID 59243)

7662 - The Labors of Rustam III: The Longest Day (Arc ID 78130)

just posted on CoHMR.


Thanks!

Posted on CoHMR for a review.

It starts in Atlas (Megan Duncan Task Force)
Arc #381565

Last's night's arc review, tonight!

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

My current queue:

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

Take my War against the Undying One off the list, Glaz, I'm deleting them and have canceled my account.

I would really appreciate if you had a go at reviewing Salvage Rights Arc #366579. Although it's currently one of the featured arcs on CoHMR, it's yet to benefit from the exposure. Also I have recently tweaked several things after a recent review by Mychyl, so im hoping I can now say the thing is finally finished!

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

My current queue:

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

@GlaziusF

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

---

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

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

But okay. Let's save the past.

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

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

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

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

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

---

On to phase two.

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

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

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

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

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

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

---

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

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

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

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

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

---

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

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

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

---

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

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

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

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

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

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

---

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

My current queue:

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

I'll work on modifying the boss powers this weekend.
I probably won't have time for a while to make any more significant changes.

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

My current queue:

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

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

My current queue:

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