Ozzie's Arcane Asylum (Review Thread)

I've decided to try my hand at a review thread. But a couple of things to take care of first.

1. I know I'm not the best reviewer in the world. I have trouble picking apart people's arcs like some reviewers do. No matter what you will get a rating out of me, but you may not get the level of detailed criticism some other reviewers can offer. Chances are you won't get lower then a 3 unless your arc is complete garbage.

2. I don't intend to put a limit on how many ARCs can be submitted, but there may be times when I go days without writing a review. You accept that I won't always be plowing through Arcs like mad. I have things aside from MA and CoH in general that I feel like doing in my free time.

3. Tell me whether you want your review here or in a PM to avoid spoilers.

4. You can get your arc elevated in importance level by doing one of two things. Submitting an arc that fits the desired mission types I want for my characters(Listed below) or play and leave feedback for one of the arcs in my sig. You can also do both.

Characters I intend to use
Ultimo Girl (Level 50 Willpower/Super Strength Tanker) - Mainly interested in save the world style arcs. But she'll generally be used to run anything that doesn't fall in one of my other level ranges.

President Evil (Level 50 Ninjas/Dark Mastermind) - He's an evil business man who wants to rule the world. He considers Crey and Circle of Thorns enemies since he sees them both as rivals. Interested in villainous arcs that involve experiments or that pretend to benefit the player.

Lady Zelara (Level 24 Night Widow) - President Evil's wife, always looking for a way to prove herself. Interested in challenging missions whether they be an actual challenge or just intended to be a challenge from a story perspective.

True Gentleman (Level 15 Trick Arrow Defender) - Mainly interested in missions involving robots or non powered human enemies (Gangs, Soldiers, etc.). Think of him as Green Arrow or Hawkeye in a business suit and top hat.

Sila Silkskin (Level 20 Radiation/Sonic Defender) - She's a Genie who can scream your head off. Interested in magic style stories.

Almost as important as saving the world:


Name: Trademark Infringement
Arc ID: 2220
Creator Global Name: @Wrong Number
Difficulty Level: Easy-Medium
Synopsis: We all know villains are not a very creative lot. Take over the world, pull the moon out of orbit....yada, yada, yada. It's no surprise that they keep the trademark lawyers very busy or that one of the lawyers has finally cracked. He needs to be stopped before this city is sued out existence!
Number of EB/AVS – 0
Story Type - Humor
Mission Count: 1
Estimated Time to Play: about 15 minutes


You can review it here or just send me it private, up to you.


WN

The arc in my sig would probably work for Ultimo Girl. If it works for you shoot me a PM with your impressions. Thanks. I'll have a look at your BE prologue later.

Looking for a review on my Dr. Marcovici arc, listed in my Signature, #161797. Ultimo Girl would probably be the best character to use. A review here is just fine, thanks!

If you'd like, I'd appreciate a review of "The Fracturing of Time" (arc id 171031). It'd probably be best suited for Ultimo Girl. Thanks!

If any of these seem appropriate for your characters, feel free:

<ul type="square">[*]"Blowback" #4643, 41-50 -- Malta/Rikti, the stakes aren't quite the world but there are two big attacks in Steel Canyon to deal with[*]"Chains of Blood" #4829, 45-50 -- Circle of Thorns, does have a global threat at the end[*]"Two Households Alike" #126582, 21-29 -- a Romeo and Juliet pastiche using two custom Family sub-factions. Thematically appropriate for True Gentleman but at 15 he'd have his hands full with the AV at the end.[*]"Why We Fight" #253990, disjointed level range -- an Arachnos propaganda piece intended as an AE production "in-game". This is a satire intended mainly for the player than for the character and contains nothing bigger than a Boss (no matter what the nav bar says).[*]"Splintered Shields" #253991, 45-50 -- a cop story involving Arachnos and Longbow; again, the stakes aren't the world but Ultimo Girl might like it[/list]

If you felt like checking out #246464, "Hooray for Hamster Hell!", any feedback would be greatly appreciated. An in-thread review is fine with me.

President Evil sounds like the likely best choice re: characters. It's not hard to imagine why a villain - particularly, **spoiler spoiler**, one who has already dealt with oni - would want to investigate the source of this interesting new destructive power for his own selfish reasons. Even though this mission is technically Hero-aligned, I can see it fitting Prez' character and offering a fighting chance solo. Ultimo Girl's specialization in world-saving missions would be a good fit, too.

Thanks
- Eraserdog

Ultimo Girl should be a good fit for either of my two arcs.

Amazon-Avatars is a pretty huge, global level threat (arc 5909)

Escalation starts out with a detective asking an illustrious hero to help with a situation well below them. But, as the name implies, it goes up from there, with a worthy fight at the end. (Arc #6143)

Hey, if you get the chance, I'd love to hear your thoughts on my new arc, The Boneyard. It's low-level, but very story driven. Details follow:

Arc Name: The Boneyard
Arc ID: 253542
Faction: Heroic
Creator Global/Forum Name: @Gebsy/Captain Zero
Difficulty Level: Easy, Level 1-14
Synopsis: A local youth, Gabriel Rodriguez, is getting involved in gang activity with the Skulls. His older brother, Manuel, has asked you for your help bringing Gabriel back to the right side. Can you help save him from a life of violence?
Estimated Time to Play: 30-90 minutes

Ultimo Girl sounds perfect for The Audition (arc ID in my Sig). If she played it, she'd get to Save the World at least twice, possibly even three times depending on how you view mission 3. Its 6 missions long, split over 2 slots.

Eco

Quote:

Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow [The Incarnate System is] Jack Emmert all over again, only this time it's not "1 hero = 3 white minions" it's "1 hero = 3 white rocks."

I intended to get to a few of these today. But I have a massive headache at the moment. Hopefully it'll be gone later. I intend to get at least Trademark Infringement and a Close Encounter late tonight.

[ QUOTE ]
Name: Trademark Infringement
Arc ID: 2220
Creator Global Name: @Wrong Number
Difficulty Level: Easy-Medium
Synopsis: We all know villains are not a very creative lot. Take over the world, pull the moon out of orbit....yada, yada, yada. It's no surprise that they keep the trademark lawyers very busy or that one of the lawyers has finally cracked. He needs to be stopped before this city is sued out existence!
Number of EB/AVS – 0
Story Type - Humor
Mission Count: 1
Estimated Time to Play: about 15 minutes

[/ QUOTE ]

Ran the arc on Ultimo Girl.

The contact Ms. Manners informs me that there are a bunch of wannabes trademarking their rip off gimmicks. Ok...

As soon as I enter the mission, I'm greeted by the fist of a man named Ten Pin. I couldn't help but laugh upon reading his description. Facebook? I proceeded in to face the next enemy and... dear god!

About halfway through the mission. I felt as though I weren't dressed properly for the occasion. So I switched costumes.

Is it bad that I actually can tell who all these villains are supposed to be? I know a lot of these would be lost on my friends. One minor complaint about the group. For the most part, you got a nice variety going. But something just feels a little too... batty.

The group definately isn't overpowered seeing as how they couldn't hurt me even when I stood still. Granted I'm a tanker but even the boss couldn't do anything, I actually read their bios while they waled on me.

I'm not going to quote any of the dialogue here because I don't want to spoil it for anyone who hasn't played it already, but it is an excellent parody. A lot of their dialogue sounds exactly like the kinds of things you'd hear out of crybabies in an MMO.

All in all it was very entertaining. Thought I was a little dissapointed that the cheesy names the contact listed off at the beginning never appeared.

I'm rating it 5 stars. Because I feel the mission accomplished it's goal. It was an enjoyable little comedy and it's hard to nitpick over things that aren't intended as Canon. The other reason for the rating is it's shortness, it was good that it's short. It might not have been as enjoyable if you had decided to stretch it out into a multi mission arc. This is one case where shortness works in the arcs favor. {Aside from being easy to access.)

Note: More reviews to come over the weekend. Things haven't gone my way time wise this week.

I think Ultimo Girl might like one of mine, Time's Maelstrom (see sig). Save the world, save Time itself, then decide the fate of two worlds!

And Sila Silkskin might enjoy Daytime Divas (also in sig). A light-comedy parody of daytime TV, with magical hijinks.

You can review either (or both, or all three) here. Thanks!

The Revenge of Dr. Marcovici: #161797

I ran this arc as Ultimo Girl as the author recommended.

Right off the bat, looking at the mission list. I'm saying you should change all the missions to be level 20-54. With the ability to change level ranges there is no reason to leave 2 of the missions at 1-54 when you have 2 that are 20-54. And.... having played the whole thing now, definately change the missions to all be 20-54. Anyone below 20 wouldn't be even remotely prepared for that boss at the end IMO.

Mission 1

Nice starting dialogue from the contact. Jumps right into making the player feel important. Contact needs a description added, it's still the default MA description.

So the Freaks asked for me specifically. I'm flattered. Inspite of them being one of the groups that goes all the way to level 50, they've never felt even remotely important to me, so I find myself wondering what's up.

The mission itself wasn't bad. But felt like a lot of nothing just to find a note at the end from the Freak's employer. Freaks could use a little dialogue to give a better feeling of what's going on. At least from their perspective. The mercenary comments were nice but maybe have some of them questioning why it's so important to capture the player.

Mission 2

The M-7 guys look interesting. Thought some of them do look awkward as that helmet kinda clashes with their outfit. Was that "Not Marcovici" a boss objective at the end or did I just get a random boss spawn? If it was an objective he should be a requirement and maybe attach a clue to him. Otherwise it seems completely pointless for him to be there seeing as I got the clue before the last room and didn't need to fight him. I just decided to check the last room for the heck of it.

Mission 3

The briefing text is interesting. It's up to you but I got some slack for doing something like this. Most of what the contact had to say, should probably be discovered by the hero through clues in the previous mission or 2. It makes the player feel more involved then having the contact tell them everything. On another note however, a nice little plot twist. It uses something that a player couldn't claim they didn't do unless they skipped the tutorial. It's kind of a major flashback for my character seeing as at level 50, Outbreak is a long distant memory.

I'm just defusing the bombs right? Why do you have them set to dissapear? Turning a bomb off doesn't make it suddenly go poof! No new information was discovered here. This Dr. is making me want to give him a taste of my fist now.

Mission 4

Don't got much to say about this mission. It was rather short and not much happened.

The debriefing however was a massive twist. Either stop yourself from being framed or save two heroes who are being held hostage. No time to do both.

Part H

I chose to save the heroes rather then my reputation. I feel it's the decision most true heroes would make.

Mission 1

Pretty short and straight forward mission. Not much to say. Nice debriefing, however where you have the word "down" I believe you intended to say "done".

Mission 2

I understand that the Longbow consider my framed hero a priority over the main reason they're in the warehouse. But they still shouldn't be walking past the baddies s though they're buddies. Maybe consider settng the Longbow patrols to Rogue and you can set them to hard if you don't want them getting defeated by the regular enemies.

When Coyote says "I must get back to my post in Outbreak" it feels kind of silly. I'm pretty sure Outbreak wasn't intended to be considered a place, it was more or less an event that your character goes through.

During the mission debriefing, lair is mispelled as liar.

Mission 3

Time to take on the big bad guy finally. RADIATION?! ACK! OW! Seriously though this guy is the only thing in the whole arc that actually put me in any sort of danger. I had to activate Strength of Will to avoid faceplanting but that's what I expect out of a boss, so don't look at this as a complain.

Final Thoughts

You're very creative and you do a good job with dialogue when you're actually conveying a plot point. But there are a few times through out the missions where it just feels like everyone is just going through the motions so to speak. However you did something I've never seen anyone do before. You actually made the arc feel like it's about the player. Not only because the villain frames the player, but because it also uses a bit of story that most people can't claim they haven't done. Everyone always says you can't assume anything about the player, the only thing you assume is that they have played through the tutorial. Even if they haven't done so with the character theyr'e using, most people have played through the tutorial numerous times and know what happened in it. So generally, these references are things that won't be lost on anyone except maybe the AE farm babies. It's enjoyable to face a villain who I'm fighting because they legitimately hate me rather then having some standard villain motive and I'm just stopping them. For this reason alone I'm giving you a 5 star rating. I feel some things could use some improving but overall it's an excellent story.

This one's going to be kind of a quick one since I don't have too much to say regarding it.

Arc ID 171031 : The Fracturing of Time
Rating: ****

My thoughts: This was a very well written story and there are only a few things that kept it from earning a 5 star rating from me. One of which is the Kyrdosi themselves, I had very little chance to see them and have much of a feel for their existance before they got gobbled up and turned into evil ghost people. It kind of kills much ability to be able to feel a connection to the story. You did manage to somewhat counter this with another major plotpoint however...

The contact, I had a guess near the beginning of Mission 2 who it was supposed to be and I wasn't that far off. The main thing that gave it away was that you clearly used a male character model but because my character is a girl, it kept referring to the contact as a her. Still the whole shedding your emotions thing did a pretty good job at dealing with disconnection I was feeling with the plot.

Honestly, I feel that the few flaws about this arc are mostly due to the MA's limitations. I'm sure you probably wanted a lot of things to have a more ghostly feel then they did, but you did a good job working with what you had.

Anyhow those are my thoughts. Managed to finish just before the servers went down for maintenance.

Just a little bump to post up my Queue

#4829 - "Chains of Blood" by Venture
#246464 - "Hurray of Hamster Hell" by Eraserdog
#221240 - "The Audition" by MrCaptainMan
#5909 - "Amazon Avatars" by Shagster
#253542 - "The Boneyard" by Captain Zero
#94504 - "Daytime Divas" by Deathbug

For the Gentleman, you could probably get by alright with Dream Paper (1874) or Bricked Electronics (2180). Bricked seems more his style.

Lady Zelara ought to be in the sweet spot for The Bravuran Jobs (5073).

I would gladly recommend A Tangle in Time (2622) for Sila.

Stealing an idea here... ran the arc on Ultimo Girl



Arc ID#4829 "Chains of Blood by Venture

Oh hey look it's Azuria. She really gets around for a low level contact doesn't she? She informs me that two heroes have fallen into the clutches of the Circle of Thorns. We can't be having that now can we?

Mission 1

I enter the Circle base and hear Legacy of Chain going at it with them. However they were no match against this group of Circle members as not one of them was left alive by the time I got there.

I punch my way through the hordes of enemies until I come across a rather creepy looking mage spouting some nonsense about blood and what not. I proceed in to free the heroes and that's that.

(So that's your in game avatar eh Venture?)

Mission 2

Apparently Legacy Chain ticked off the Thorns. So they're attacking them and trying to get information out of them. Ultimo Girl to the rescue! Not sure who I feel more bad for, the Legacy Chain fighting overleveled enemies or the Circle for having to fight me.

Run into another creepy blood mage guy. This one manages to get in some good hits. I take him down and save another person

Mission 3 & 4

I don't have much to say about these. There was definately more of the story revealed but as far as what was going on in them, they almost felt identical to the first 2 missions.

Mission 5

I have to battle all the Blood Redeemers one last time here, destroy an alter, and see an interesting little twist. After having the story early on say "It doesn't involve the Mu, No really!" the Mu show up and so does their goddess.

My thoughts: I kinda have mixed feelings on this arc. I actually am probably a rarity in that I like fighting the Circle of Thorns. But each of the Blood Redeemers looked the same except for their colors so it felt like I was fighting the same guy over and over again(Even with their different powers).

I like that it felt like something I could see happening as an official mission, but also the first 4 missions felt rather repetive.

Overall it's a well written story with some interesting twists, but it felt a little dragged out.

And of course I figured I wouldn't see any grammar/spelling errors in one of your arcs. So I didn't have any of those to mention.

Rating: ****

Thanks for the review, and the good rating.

And yes, that's Venture/Virtue's (and Starfall's) most popular costume. I almost always get complimented on it in groups.

Hey I played you Arc# 159922 Agent Thunder Taskforce (Heroes) 45-54

It was so full of detail. Very challenging and fun. Two friends who came to help me both asked for the arc ID so they could replay.

I would love if you would try my arc:

In Pursuit of Liberty - 221702 by @Gypsy Rose

A few things you should know before you play. It has been called both too easy and too hard. Based on the challenge of your arc, I would say do not use the allies. They are there for people who want to enjoy the story and not needed for most really skilled players. Oddly my arc is hardest so far for scrappers.

Also, there is humor mixed in the arc, so if something seems way off to you most likely it is an attempt at humor.

Feel free to post yout impressions here or PM me.

I hope you enjoy!