Post by Rashar on Mar 19, 2016 6:39:11 GMT -5
There are some things that happened in this battle (both good and "bad") that I want to get of my chest.
(1) One of the great things is that one of your characters goes: "They will also come from behind" If you pay attention to what the characters say, you already have some knowledge about the fight and we all know that there is no knowledge that is not power.
(2) The recourceful and crafty players will probably have revealed a large portion of the battlefield before the battle cutscene, the game doesn't tell you to do that. It is good to see that some advantages can be gained purely by being active. A game that does not continually hold your hand is a great thing. (imo atleast)
(3) The difficulty that grudually goes up due to you leveling and enemies gaining more stats and probably dice is a nice thing and the difference is noticeable. You start of in the haunted crypts (Braeys) or the cursed mines (Koda) and they throw some skeletons (archers and spearmen) and shades at you and the threat level is probably very low. You end up facing enemies in towers where there is suddenly a different mix of enemies and you really have to prioritize on which enemies have to die first. (Usually comes down to KILL ALL RANGED because melee units miss 95% of the times)
(4) The environment is great, there is enough detail to draw you in get emersed. You are on your toes because of the traps and on the lookout for secret doors. In general the vibe that you are in broken down city due to the shattering and that some parts have survived shines through.
Now these were the things that I particularly enjoyed while playing episode 3 so far and especially this 2nd tower, things that annoy me or puzzle me...
(1) Nitpicking here, but there is an area it is called unlooted tomb. Before entering the party goes something like this: "Oh, this is untouched since the shattering" Once inside it is infested with undead. (this I understand, people have died here and the deadening field or some major magic has also raised them and they have not been able to leave the tomb) But how did the necromancers get in? Did they found another way into this "undiscovered" tomb? As far as the story let me know the necromancers are drawn to the city of the dead and seek the acceptance/favor of the seer lords. Or are these necromancers wizards who have once died and are now necromancers? Also in this "secret" area they have laid a trap for you. HOW? The place is undiscovered so how did they know someone was coming... they have been there like 50-70 years. Anyway just nitpicking here as I don't get the idea as to how and why things are happening like that in that map.
(2) More nitpicking but deffo higher on my annoyance list. Loot... Now I do not expect to find upgrades left and right and it could be that I am unlucky however all the way upto the tower of horror I cleared everything and looted everything, both sides. (including fang and storm brothers quests) Most armor/items that my party have is because of items you can buy in stores or items that you get through the story and are 100%. Especially weapons seem to be rather rare since all my characters use weapons that are obtained by store or story mode. Now don't get me wrong I work with what I am given and it works out but some chests contain loot that even for episode standars would be considered "bad". The chests from the boss battles which I had hoped to contain higher levels of loot or maybe just higher chances on items that I could describe as useable atleast but to no avail. Pretty low tier items and a ton of armors without any abilities on them.
All in all I expected to be surprised by some cool items or atleast items that felt like a loot reward for beating a seer lord. This might be the d&d player within me and I might be comparing it to other rpgs to much. (Not sure if allowed to name names of other games for comparison but I'll refrain from it for now) I also have no idea how loot really works in this game and there are times where I see a red locked box change into a blue locked box after beating a boss and then after beating another boss it becomes a normal box. Not sure if this is how it is intended though. But general conclusion: So far the items that I have seen in episode 3 are "meh". Episode 2 with the underforge felt much more rewarding to me.
(3) Character dialogue telling you to do something and it not being the right thing?! In the boss battle in tower of horror it was Kjartan who said: "We need to kill him fast before he summons the 2nd seer lord." Now this had some impact on me because I was being attacked from 2 sides, although the number of enemies was not that high and the only 2 threats were 1 necromancer and 1 seer lord. So as a player I thought that Kjartan was implying that killing the seer lord that was present would prevent another seer lord from entering. Literally in the 1st round, I rushed Vraes to the seer lord and in 3 hits he killed him... (lots of mp and 1ap swings combined with upto 500+ crits) Now to my utter amazement the second seer lord SPAWNED... this meant there were now 3 extra necromancers, 1 wraith and a ton of trashmobs. On the upside my whole party got there ap+mp back but the only who actually used some was Vraes... So yeah facing 4 necromancers, 1 wraith, 1 seer lord and being attacked from 2 sides was a nice uphill battle and Vraes made sure that the next time Kjartan had any suggestions he better keep it to himself.
But all jokes aside, if this was meant to "trick" the player into killing the seer lord 1st in order to make the battle harder, ok... well done, you succeeded. Ofcourse I don't know if there was an alternate spawn condition for the 2nd seer lord so maybe he would have come anyway after the 1st round... in that case I might have done the right thing from the start and this mini rant makes no sense anymore.
But basically I have no clue why Kjartan said let's kill him 1st, if it was up to me I would stripped his ap and cleared the backside 1st so I was no longer attacked from both sides.
(4) Enemies with summon capabilities boxing themselves in and then spam summoning 3-4 enemies per turn. This is something I noticed about the necromancers, especially in tower of horrors since I fought 4 of them at once and well with a seer lord and wraith bashing at me I couldnt let my party run around freely. So I managed to strip ap from from all of them, although that doesnt seem to affect there ability since it seems to cost either 1 ap or "all ap". The way the ability seems to work is that it spawns 1 minion and 1 minion extra for any adjacent minions to the necromancer upto 4. So in this tower of horror battle I had 1 necromancer (the one that originally came from behind) boxing himself in and he kept using summon every turn adding a shit ton of enemies to the map. I know what you will say... prioritize him! Well I could not! Wraith and Seer lord are tactical enemies (meaning they will use any mp left after attacking to reposition) so they kept threatening my Kjartan and Kyera so I kinda needed to make sure that Vraes ended his movement close to them while I was beating the other 3 necro's. Anyway this was a small issue but I noticed this issue earlier in episode 2 aswell. One time where a spider spawned in a corner and after the 1st summon he was boxed in and since it was a spawn trigger that was miles away from me, the small spiders stayed put. The second time versus Vurnak where I died when I spawned 2 packs of mobs when trying to grab a crystal, I used restore. Got ported to the campsite. Went back to the map. All enemies where on the map, including 2 of those spiders that make small spiders but because they were at the back of the map and I was at the entrance they kept making those annoying things and I did not have a range 40 ability to strip ap.
(5) last but not least some more nitpicking. After I killed all the scary mobs I had 15 skeletons with spears left and I decided to drag this shitty battle out in order to grab the kill 8 mobs in a round and the kill 10 mobs in a round achievement on steam. I made sure to put them as low as I could and 4 ended up dying accidentally xD. Eventually I ended up killing 11 in 1 round. I got awarded the "God's wrath" achievement HOWEVER... I did not get the award for killing 8 mobs in 1 round -_-. Like I said it's nitpicking but it's kinda strange.
With kind regards,
Rashar.
(1) One of the great things is that one of your characters goes: "They will also come from behind" If you pay attention to what the characters say, you already have some knowledge about the fight and we all know that there is no knowledge that is not power.
(2) The recourceful and crafty players will probably have revealed a large portion of the battlefield before the battle cutscene, the game doesn't tell you to do that. It is good to see that some advantages can be gained purely by being active. A game that does not continually hold your hand is a great thing. (imo atleast)
(3) The difficulty that grudually goes up due to you leveling and enemies gaining more stats and probably dice is a nice thing and the difference is noticeable. You start of in the haunted crypts (Braeys) or the cursed mines (Koda) and they throw some skeletons (archers and spearmen) and shades at you and the threat level is probably very low. You end up facing enemies in towers where there is suddenly a different mix of enemies and you really have to prioritize on which enemies have to die first. (Usually comes down to KILL ALL RANGED because melee units miss 95% of the times)
(4) The environment is great, there is enough detail to draw you in get emersed. You are on your toes because of the traps and on the lookout for secret doors. In general the vibe that you are in broken down city due to the shattering and that some parts have survived shines through.
Now these were the things that I particularly enjoyed while playing episode 3 so far and especially this 2nd tower, things that annoy me or puzzle me...
(1) Nitpicking here, but there is an area it is called unlooted tomb. Before entering the party goes something like this: "Oh, this is untouched since the shattering" Once inside it is infested with undead. (this I understand, people have died here and the deadening field or some major magic has also raised them and they have not been able to leave the tomb) But how did the necromancers get in? Did they found another way into this "undiscovered" tomb? As far as the story let me know the necromancers are drawn to the city of the dead and seek the acceptance/favor of the seer lords. Or are these necromancers wizards who have once died and are now necromancers? Also in this "secret" area they have laid a trap for you. HOW? The place is undiscovered so how did they know someone was coming... they have been there like 50-70 years. Anyway just nitpicking here as I don't get the idea as to how and why things are happening like that in that map.
(2) More nitpicking but deffo higher on my annoyance list. Loot... Now I do not expect to find upgrades left and right and it could be that I am unlucky however all the way upto the tower of horror I cleared everything and looted everything, both sides. (including fang and storm brothers quests) Most armor/items that my party have is because of items you can buy in stores or items that you get through the story and are 100%. Especially weapons seem to be rather rare since all my characters use weapons that are obtained by store or story mode. Now don't get me wrong I work with what I am given and it works out but some chests contain loot that even for episode standars would be considered "bad". The chests from the boss battles which I had hoped to contain higher levels of loot or maybe just higher chances on items that I could describe as useable atleast but to no avail. Pretty low tier items and a ton of armors without any abilities on them.
All in all I expected to be surprised by some cool items or atleast items that felt like a loot reward for beating a seer lord. This might be the d&d player within me and I might be comparing it to other rpgs to much. (Not sure if allowed to name names of other games for comparison but I'll refrain from it for now) I also have no idea how loot really works in this game and there are times where I see a red locked box change into a blue locked box after beating a boss and then after beating another boss it becomes a normal box. Not sure if this is how it is intended though. But general conclusion: So far the items that I have seen in episode 3 are "meh". Episode 2 with the underforge felt much more rewarding to me.
(3) Character dialogue telling you to do something and it not being the right thing?! In the boss battle in tower of horror it was Kjartan who said: "We need to kill him fast before he summons the 2nd seer lord." Now this had some impact on me because I was being attacked from 2 sides, although the number of enemies was not that high and the only 2 threats were 1 necromancer and 1 seer lord. So as a player I thought that Kjartan was implying that killing the seer lord that was present would prevent another seer lord from entering. Literally in the 1st round, I rushed Vraes to the seer lord and in 3 hits he killed him... (lots of mp and 1ap swings combined with upto 500+ crits) Now to my utter amazement the second seer lord SPAWNED... this meant there were now 3 extra necromancers, 1 wraith and a ton of trashmobs. On the upside my whole party got there ap+mp back but the only who actually used some was Vraes... So yeah facing 4 necromancers, 1 wraith, 1 seer lord and being attacked from 2 sides was a nice uphill battle and Vraes made sure that the next time Kjartan had any suggestions he better keep it to himself.
But all jokes aside, if this was meant to "trick" the player into killing the seer lord 1st in order to make the battle harder, ok... well done, you succeeded. Ofcourse I don't know if there was an alternate spawn condition for the 2nd seer lord so maybe he would have come anyway after the 1st round... in that case I might have done the right thing from the start and this mini rant makes no sense anymore.
But basically I have no clue why Kjartan said let's kill him 1st, if it was up to me I would stripped his ap and cleared the backside 1st so I was no longer attacked from both sides.(4) Enemies with summon capabilities boxing themselves in and then spam summoning 3-4 enemies per turn. This is something I noticed about the necromancers, especially in tower of horrors since I fought 4 of them at once and well with a seer lord and wraith bashing at me I couldnt let my party run around freely. So I managed to strip ap from from all of them, although that doesnt seem to affect there ability since it seems to cost either 1 ap or "all ap". The way the ability seems to work is that it spawns 1 minion and 1 minion extra for any adjacent minions to the necromancer upto 4. So in this tower of horror battle I had 1 necromancer (the one that originally came from behind) boxing himself in and he kept using summon every turn adding a shit ton of enemies to the map.
I know what you will say... prioritize him! Well I could not! Wraith and Seer lord are tactical enemies (meaning they will use any mp left after attacking to reposition) so they kept threatening my Kjartan and Kyera so I kinda needed to make sure that Vraes ended his movement close to them while I was beating the other 3 necro's. Anyway this was a small issue but I noticed this issue earlier in episode 2 aswell. One time where a spider spawned in a corner and after the 1st summon he was boxed in and since it was a spawn trigger that was miles away from me, the small spiders stayed put. The second time versus Vurnak where I died when I spawned 2 packs of mobs when trying to grab a crystal, I used restore. Got ported to the campsite. Went back to the map. All enemies where on the map, including 2 of those spiders that make small spiders but because they were at the back of the map and I was at the entrance they kept making those annoying things and I did not have a range 40 ability to strip ap.(5) last but not least some more nitpicking. After I killed all the scary mobs I had 15 skeletons with spears left and I decided to drag this shitty battle out in order to grab the kill 8 mobs in a round and the kill 10 mobs in a round achievement on steam. I made sure to put them as low as I could and 4 ended up dying accidentally xD. Eventually I ended up killing 11 in 1 round. I got awarded the "God's wrath" achievement HOWEVER... I did not get the award for killing 8 mobs in 1 round -_-. Like I said it's nitpicking but it's kinda strange.
With kind regards,
Rashar.
