The Alien Tyrant (arc 357388)

Keywords: Ideal for Teams, Save the World, Sci Fi
Length: Long (Four Missions)
Morality: Heroic
Enemy Groups: Custom Group, Arachnos
Description: The Restarian Empire is back! This time, you are taking the fight to their home planet! Gather up your strongest allies and fight your way right to the evil Emperor himself.

Notes: So, as you can probably tell from the description and keywords, this is an arc meant for a team. By them being "back", let me give you the Too Long; Didn't Read version: They were in my first arc, I deleted it, people who played it wanted them back.

It's my latest one. Hope I can hear everyone's feedback and/or crticisms soon.

Bump. So... no one is interested? Not a soul? Come on guys, please? It's been decades since I had a review or even a rating on one of my arcs, and it was from a kid who wanted the end boss to be a Naruto ninja.

Times are tough for everyone in AE right now. My advice is to request a review from one of the reviewers/MA teams.

The description implies that this is a sequel to some other arc. What was the first one?

MY playtime's rather curtailed atm so I can't promise I'll get to it, but others might appreciate it. If nothing else, this time you could do it the way you think it should be.

It turns out I had a bit of free time today, The Hound, so when I saw your request I decided to check out your arc.

Now, I have my own review thread (where I usually post longer, in-depth reviews), but since I'm still kind of busy as of late I'll leave some comments here that I hope you find helpful.

First of all, I was honestly surprised by this arc. I'm not exactly sure what I was expecting, but I can tell you for a fact that whatever I WAS expecting, this story arc exceeded it greatly. The custom group is very well designed (with perhaps one minor nitpick); the storyline is a bit formulaic, but nonetheless enjoyable to play through; and each mission flows nicely into the next from start to finish. Add to the fact that there were almost no spelling/grammatical errors (I'll point out the few I found), and you have a solid AE experience.

I do have so minor nitpicks, of course. First of all, while I found the custom group "The Restarian Empire" to be very well done, it might help to add one more Lieutenant to the mix if you have the space. When a custom group is the central enemy of a story arc, I generally use the rule of thumb "at least 3 Minions", "at least 2 Lieutenants", and "at least 1 Boss" (not counting unique named characters, of course). Of course, if you don't have the space, or you like the group the way it is, I wouldn't suggest taking anything out of the arc to add another custom character. It's up to you.

Second, it MIGHT help to change the "defeault stance" of the rebels in the 3rd mission to Energy Field or something similar that makes them stand out. While I had no problems finding the bosses in the 3rd mission, I will admit I found it a bit tedious to track down all the rebels in the large outdoor map, so Energy Field might help players find them easier.

Finally, the spelling/grammatical errors. The first one I found was in the 4th mission dialog send-off, "eachother" needs a space between "each" and "other". The other was the use of "you're" throughout the arc in place of "your". "You're" is a conjuction of "you" and "are". "Your" denotes ownership. For example, when one of the Restarian officers says "I'll have you're head!", he should be saying "I'll have your head!". Other than that, however, the spelling/grammar in this arc is fine (unless I missed something, of course).

Overall, I think this arc definitely deserves some recognition in the AE Community. There are many MA Story Arc reviewers in this section of the forum, and I'd suggest you ask them for reviews of this arc so they can help you improve it even further. Maybe it's because this arc slightly reminds me of my own "Galactic Protectorate" series, but I'd definitely like to see some other story arcs from this author.

Final Score: 5 Stars

My thoughts are posted in my One a Day thread. - S12

I have played this arc tonight with the MA super team. A big problem we faced was that while people seem to like the custom fraction and find it well designed, in our team the custom group did not translate so well. I don't dare to recall how often I went facedown. Splattered all over the place by bosses doing build up, Kersplash say hi to the nurse for me. Mind you, I was playing a Brute. Granted, we were comparatively lowbies and most of us did not have IO sets but at 0/0 without AV's you don't expect to get so much trouble as we had.

Mechanically everything was fine but storywise I at least was not that happy. I think Sister Twelve said it better then I ever could. I really think that most of your effort should be focused on that story. To make it more logical. I gave you some ideas about that in your other thread. One hint, a few of the players found it difficult to identify with the story because the introduction of the enemy fraction assumed that you had played the prequel and I alone had done that.

Build Up. Build Up. And I repeat again: Build Up. It doesn't help that the enemy group was rather homogenous visually, so the guys that could two-shot you didn't stand out much from the guys who couldn't. For an arc that focuses so heavily on a custom group, they weren't very well developed, I thought. Evil tyrannical empire...how are they different from any other evil tyrannical empire? Some more background would have been helpful in drawing the player into the story. Some optional objectives maybe, to give us more of a sense of exactly what kind of evil empire we are dealing with.

Oh and yeah, did I mention ditch the Build Up? The big lab map with the two elevators could stand to be replaced as well.

Sorry for this necrobump, but I have made a rather large update to both the story of the arc and the custom group. There are alot of changes, so I'll list some you might want to know.

The 'Royal Guard' NPC has had its name changed to 'Imperial Guard' as well as the Palace mentioned in the dialogue.

Both the Treason Unit and Imperial Guard NPC have had a different colour scheme put on them, as well as some minor costume tweaks.

The Shock Trooper and Imperial Guard's Build Up has been removed.

More optional objectives have been placed in the missions which provide an insight into what the empire is.

The three rebels with the same dialogue have been replaced by a single Rebel leader who, upon rescue, will fight at the side of the player.

Mission three now has some street battles, with small groups of rebels facing off against the Restarian military. The rebels will most likely lose unless the player(s) intervene.

Major updates to clues and dialogue spoken by the contact of the arc.

All in all, things should now flow much easier for the player. I hope those who have played the arc and have found some irritating problems with it will now see some improvement if they want to play it again. Wouldn't have been possible without your reviews guys, thanks!